Robin….point by point:
1) “In the *narrowest sense of "jump cut", whereby the effect is produced by the (physical or otherwise) excision of frames from an unedited continuous transcript, or "shot", this was exactly what Ezra Pound did to Eliot's manuscript of "The Waste Land".”
Yes, but that can’t really be compared to a jump-cut as there is no equivalent to a film frame in language/writing.
2) “What irritates the hell out of me is the way in which Jeffrey seems to me to be privileging this meaning over all others. It's not even, as far as I can make out, and regardless of what Jeffrey was taught, even the predominant meaning of the term in practical cinematography ("film studies" might be a separate issue).”
I’m not privileging it out of others, as I don’t think other meanings are valid. Also, the jump-cut grew out of film aesthetics rather than the practical aspects of cinematography—-Eisenstein was essentially a theorist who used film as an outworking of his ideas.
3) I began thinking about the way in which narrative discontinuity is used in the Sonnets, and isn't actually picked up as a mainstream literary technique till the work of Berryman in the Dream Songs and Lowell in _Life Studies_, but I also did the obvious (for a lexicographer) which was look up to see what the OED says.
Again, a jump-cut is not a device that is concerned with narrative discontinuity. You seem to be redefining the term to suit your examples, Robin.
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