Frequently used pejoratively to describe writing which lacks originality, pastiche has been given a kind of respectability by the so-called post-modernists. It’s a piece of writing made up of pieces of writing ‘borrowed’ from other writers, so it’s a bit like a collage.
I produced a pastiche of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals by rearranging selected words and phrases to make them look like a poem and to bring out an unspoken truth in her recollections. Here is a sample:
William worked at the cuckow poem. I sewed beside him.
The fire flutters, the watch ticks. I hear nothing else save
the breathing of my beloved.
I must wash myself then off. No letters! I expected one
fully from Coleridge. But as I climbed the Moss, the moon came out. O the unutterable darkness
of the sky and the earth below the moon. It gave me exquisite feelings. I got tea when I reached home. Read Spenser while he made a pillow of my shoulder.
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