found literature

English

Noun

found literature (uncountable)

1. Literature created by taking words, phrases, or passages from other sources and combining or editing them so as to impart new meaning.
   • 1981, Jacob Rader Marcus, Abraham Joseph Peck, Studies in the American Jewish Experience: Contributions from the Fellowship Programs of the American Jewish Archives:

     Cohen embraced the clipping as a kind of found literature-an indigenous comic genre. "An Elder of Zion," a persona Cohen assumed in the journal in 1929, was also addicted to cutting tidbits out of the Jewish press, […]

   • 2005, John Robert Colombo, All the poems of John Robert Colombo:

     French leadership in found literature has shifted to found music, musique concrete, in which natural sounds are introduced into musical compositions, often to the exclusion of traditional instrumentation.

   • 2008, Journal of Narrative Theory: JNT, page 354:

     Insertions of found literature reinforce this record of ephemerality: intermingling passages from advertisements, newspaper clippings, and songs within the narrators' musings, Dos Passos imitates how subjects moving through Manhattan might  […]