Phrastic

Phrastic is an adjective used in literary criticism and poetics to describe a practice that treats phrases or units of expression as the primary building blocks of a text. Deriving from the Greek phrasis, meaning speech or expression, the term is applied to works in which language operates at the level of phrases rather than solely through original sentences or narrative progression.

In practice, phrastic writing foregrounds the materiality of phrases. Poets and writers may assemble, alter, borrow, or recombine well-known phrases, idioms, or lines from other texts to produce new effects, often creating intertextual resonance or critique. This can include found-language techniques, collage, or quotation-based composition, where the relation to source material is explicit or subtly transformed.

It is related to, but distinct from, ekphrasis and from traditional found poetry; the emphasis is on the phrase as the unit of meaning and the way phrases can be relocated, reinterpreted, or juxtaposed to reveal new associations or questions about language, authorship, and discourse.

Usage of phrastic as a term is primarily found in contemporary poetics and literary criticism. It may be used to describe a mode, a technique, or a single piece that relies on phrase-level recombination rather than narrative coherence, offering a way to analyze works that foreground linguistic fragments.

See also: ekphrasis; found poetry; collage poetry; intertextuality.