Date of Graduation
2000
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
As early as 1952, seven years before the publication of his most critically acclaimed work, Naked Lunch, William Burroughs began to express a dissatisfaction with traditional, essentially narrative, novelistic structures. Following the lead of many of his modernist predecessors, including Joyce, Eliot, Stein, and Dos Passos, Burroughs began to appropriate visually artistic compositional strategies for the construction of his increasingly experimental literary texts. The aim of this dissertation is to highlight Burroughs' various intersections with film, the non-literary art form that seems to have had the most profound and pervasive impact on his writing and general world-view. Specifically, I attempt to demonstrate that Burroughs' successive literary appropriations of cinematic forms and techniques—including verbal montage via cut-up and fold-in juxtaposition, camera eye narration, cinematic directions, looping effects, and film script scenarios—parallels his progression towards an experimental, postmodern aesthetic. The result culminates in a unique, mid-twentieth century vision of “reality†as a pre-recorded, pre-scripted film coupled with a “hands on†approach to words and a mixed-media form of writing that can be described as “cinematic prose.â€.
Recommended Citation
Martino, John Raymond, ""Remember i was the movies": The cinematic prose of William S. Burroughs." (2000). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 9363.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/9363