Friday, March 21, 2014

The idea behind Cillit Bang by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Cillit Bang by Percy Bysshe Shelley takes inspiration from various sources. In spirit it is closest to the kind of remixed media found on Youtube. In this respect it is patchwriting and also a form of intertextual copypasta. Yet it also resembles an Oulipo piece, because there is at least one fixed constraint imposed on the writing process. While it uses Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias as its basic material, the text is altered by mixing in words and phrases from the Cillit Bang ads.  The constraint is that the inserted text be actual words and phrases from the ads, rather than words and phrases that could be from the ads. That is not to say they need to be complete sentences or entirely meaningful.

The rest of the guidelines are indeed no more than guidelines, and allow  some flexibility. They are: to keep to the original meter as much as possible, and to maintain rhyme where practical. The spirit of the ad now infuses the romantic spirit of the original, and the two cohabit the same space. Whereas Ozymandias' rigid structure more or less keeps the house together, the invasion of latter day sales talk occasionally spills out the door, marking its novelty.

In a sense there is a struggle for the identity of the poem, and both sides are changed in the process.

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