Continuous interruption : Picasso, Pound, and the structures of collage

In this thesis I argue against the conventionally held belief that collage as a form is defined through the mutual differences existing between the inserted material fragment and those signifiers that surround it. Examining works by Pablo Picasso and then turning my attention to Ezra Pound's Cantos, I seek to establish, within the related frameworks of visual and verbal collage respectively, a structural model of these and other such works predicated upon the continuity, not the distinctiveness, of fragment and host-text. Collage, I hope to show, is necessarily organic in structure due to the unstable nature of the linguistic sign, a phenomenon of language that informs the thesis from beginning to end. Ultimately, I aim to present this model as a metaphor for perception generally, as both a delineation and demonstration of the way in which one comes to know the world