Oulipo
Encyclopedia
Oulipo is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians
which seeks to create works using constrained writing
techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau
and François Le Lionnais
. Other notable members have included novel
ists Georges Perec
and Italo Calvino
, poets Oskar Pastior
Jean Lescure
and poet/mathematician Jacques Roubaud
.
The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy."
Constraints are used as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration, most notably Perec's "story-making machine", which he used in the construction of Life: A User's Manual
. As well as established techniques, such as lipogram
s (Perec's novel A Void) and palindrome
s, the group devises new techniques, often based on mathematical problems, such as the Knight's Tour
of the chess
-board and permutations.
for a colloquium on Queneau's work. During this seminar, Queneau and François Le Lionnais conceived of the society.
During the subsequent decade, Oulipo (as it was commonly known) was only rarely visible as a group. As a subcommittee, they reported their work to the full Collège de 'Pataphysique in 1961. In addition, Temps Mêlés devoted an issue to Oulipo in 1964, and Belgian
radio broadcast one Oulipo meeting. Its members were individually active during these years and published works which were created within their constraints. The group as a whole began to emerge from obscurity in 1973 with the publication of La Littérature Potentielle, a collection of representative pieces.
S+7, sometimes called N+7 : Replace every noun in a text with the noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. For example, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago...
" becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used. This technique can also be performed on other lexical classes, such as verbs.
Snowball : A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.
Lipogram
: Writing that excludes one or more letters. The previous sentence is a lipogram in B, F, H, J, K, Q, V, Y, and Z (it does not contain any of those letters).
Prisoner's constraint, also called Macao constraint : A type of lipogram that omits letters with ascenders and descender
s (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y).
Palindromes: Sonnets and other poems constructed using palindromic techniques.
Univocalism: A poem using only one vowel, although the vowel may be used in any of its aural forms. For example, "born" and "cot" could not both be used in a univocalism, unlike "sew" and "beau".
pursuits, including writers, university
professor
s, mathematicians, engineer
s, and "pataphysicians":
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
which seeks to create works using constrained writing
Constrained writing
Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern.Constraints are very common in poetry, which often requires the writer to use a particular verse form....
techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau
Raymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
and François Le Lionnais
François Le Lionnais
François Le Lionnais was a French chemical engineer and mathematician, perhaps best known as a founder of the literary movement Oulipo....
. Other notable members have included novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ists Georges Perec
Georges Perec
Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
and Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
, poets Oskar Pastior
Oskar Pastior
Oskar Pastior was a Romanian-born German poet and translator. He was the only German member of Oulipo....
Jean Lescure
Jean Lescure
- Biography :In 1938 Jean Lescure published his first plaquette of poems, "Le voyage immobile", and launched the review "Messages" ....
and poet/mathematician Jacques Roubaud
Jacques Roubaud
Jacques Roubaud is a French poet and mathematician.Jacques Roubaud is a professor of poetry at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and he was a professor of Mathematics at University of Paris X...
.
The group defines the term littérature potentielle as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy."
Constraints are used as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration, most notably Perec's "story-making machine", which he used in the construction of Life: A User's Manual
Life: A User's Manual
Life A User's Manual is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading...
. As well as established techniques, such as lipogram
Lipogram
A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language.Writing a lipogram is a trivial task...
s (Perec's novel A Void) and palindrome
Palindrome
A palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....
s, the group devises new techniques, often based on mathematical problems, such as the Knight's Tour
Knight's tour
The knight's tour is a mathematical problem involving a knight on a chessboard. The knight is placed on the empty board and, moving according to the rules of chess, must visit each square exactly once. A knight's tour is called a closed tour if the knight ends on a square attacking the square from...
of the chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
-board and permutations.
History
Oulipo was founded on November 24, 1960, as a subcommittee of the Collège de ‘Pataphysique and titled Séminaire de littérature expérimentale. At their second meeting, the group changed its name to Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or Oulipo, at Albert-Marie Schmidt's suggestion. The idea had arisen two months earlier, when a small group met in September at Cerisy-la-SalleCerisy-la-Salle
-See also:* Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle* Communes of the Manche department...
for a colloquium on Queneau's work. During this seminar, Queneau and François Le Lionnais conceived of the society.
During the subsequent decade, Oulipo (as it was commonly known) was only rarely visible as a group. As a subcommittee, they reported their work to the full Collège de 'Pataphysique in 1961. In addition, Temps Mêlés devoted an issue to Oulipo in 1964, and Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
radio broadcast one Oulipo meeting. Its members were individually active during these years and published works which were created within their constraints. The group as a whole began to emerge from obscurity in 1973 with the publication of La Littérature Potentielle, a collection of representative pieces.
Oulipian works
Some examples of Oulipian writing:- Queneau's Exercices de StyleExercises in StyleExercises in Style , written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus Exercises in Style , written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style....
is the recounting ninety-nine times of the same inconsequential episode, in which a man witnesses a minor altercation on a bus trip; each account is unique in terms of tone and style.
- Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de PoèmesHundred Thousand Billion PoemsRaymond Queneau’s Hundred Thousand Billion Poems or One hundred million million poems , published in 1961 , is a set of ten sonnets. They are printed on card with each line on a separated strip, like a heads-bodies-and-legs book...
is inspired by children's picture books in which each page is cut into horizontal strips that can be turned independently, allowing different pictures (usually of people: heads, torsos, waists, legs, etc.) to be combined in many ways. Queneau applies this technique to poetry: the book contains 10 sonnetSonnetA sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, each on a page. Each page is split into 14 strips, one for each line. The author estimates in the introductory explanation that it would take approximately 200 million years to read all possible combinations.
- Perec's novel La disparition, translated into English by Gilbert Adair and published under the title A Void, is a 300-page novel written without the letter "e," an example of a lipogram. The English translation, A Void, is also a lipogram. The novel is remarkable not only for the absence of "e," but it is a mystery in which the absence of that letter is a central theme.
- Singular Pleasures by Harry MathewsHarry MathewsHarry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...
describes 61 different scenes, each told in a different style (generally poetic, elaborate, or circumlocutory) in which 61 different people (all of different ages, nationalities, and walks of life) masturbate.
Constraints
Some Oulipian constraints:S+7, sometimes called N+7 : Replace every noun in a text with the noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. For example, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago...
Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, was written by American author Herman Melville and first published in 1851. It is considered by some to be a Great American Novel and a treasure of world literature. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod,...
" becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used. This technique can also be performed on other lexical classes, such as verbs.
Snowball : A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.
Lipogram
Lipogram
A lipogram is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language.Writing a lipogram is a trivial task...
: Writing that excludes one or more letters. The previous sentence is a lipogram in B, F, H, J, K, Q, V, Y, and Z (it does not contain any of those letters).
Prisoner's constraint, also called Macao constraint : A type of lipogram that omits letters with ascenders and descender
Descender
In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line....
s (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y).
Palindromes: Sonnets and other poems constructed using palindromic techniques.
Univocalism: A poem using only one vowel, although the vowel may be used in any of its aural forms. For example, "born" and "cot" could not both be used in a univocalism, unlike "sew" and "beau".
Founding members
The founding members of Oulipo represented a range of intellectualIntellectual
An intellectual is a person who uses intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning in either a professional or a personal capacity.- Terminology and endeavours :"Intellectual" can denote four types of persons:...
pursuits, including writers, university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
s, mathematicians, engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
s, and "pataphysicians":
- Noël Arnaud
- Valérie Beaudoin
- Jacques Bens
- Claude BergeClaude BergeClaude Berge was a French mathematician, recognized as one of the modern founders of combinatorics and graph theory. He is particularly remembered for his famous conjectures on perfect graphs and for Berge's lemma, which states that a matching M in a graph G is maximum if and only if there is in...
- Jacques Duchateau
- Anne Garréta
- Michelle Grangaud
- Latis (Emmanuel Peillet)
- François Le LionnaisFrançois Le LionnaisFrançois Le Lionnais was a French chemical engineer and mathematician, perhaps best known as a founder of the literary movement Oulipo....
- Jean LescureJean Lescure- Biography :In 1938 Jean Lescure published his first plaquette of poems, "Le voyage immobile", and launched the review "Messages" ....
- Michèle Métail
- Raymond QueneauRaymond QueneauRaymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
- Jean Queval
- Albert-Marie Schmidt
Members as of 2011
Note that Oulipo members are still considered members after their deaths.- Noël Arnaud †
- Michèle AudinMichèle AudinMichèle Audin is a French mathematician, and a professor at l'Institut de recherche mathématique avancée in Strasbourg, where she does research notably in the area of symplectic geometry....
- Valérie Beaudouin
- Marcel Bénabou
- Jacques Bens †
- Claude BergeClaude BergeClaude Berge was a French mathematician, recognized as one of the modern founders of combinatorics and graph theory. He is particularly remembered for his famous conjectures on perfect graphs and for Berge's lemma, which states that a matching M in a graph G is maximum if and only if there is in...
† - André Blavier †
- Paul Braffort
- Italo CalvinoItalo CalvinoItalo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
† - François Caradec †
- Bernard CerquigliniBernard CerquigliniBernard Cerquiglini , is a French linguist.A Graduate of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, having received an agrégé and a doctorate in letters, he was a teacher of linguistics in University of Paris VII, former director of the National Institute for the French language, former...
- Ross Chambers
- Stanley ChapmanStanley ChapmanStanley Chapman was a British architect, designer, translator and writer. His interests included theatre and pataphysics. He was involved with founding the National Theatre of London, was a member of Oulipo of the year 1960, founder of the Outrapo and a member also of the French Collège de...
† - Marcel DuchampMarcel DuchampMarcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
† - Jacques Duchateau
- Luc EtienneLuc Etienne PérinLuc Etienne Périn, also known as Luc Étienne, was a French writer and a proponent of 'Pataphysics. He was born on the 8th September, 1908, in the small town of Neuflize, in the Ardennes, and died on the 27th of November, 1984, in Reims....
† - Frédéric Forte
- Paul FournelPaul FournelPaul Fournel is a French writer, poet, publisher, and cultural ambassador. He was educated at the École normale supérieure of Saint-Cloud . Fournel wrote his master's thesis on Raymond Queneau and published the first book-length study of the Oulipo, Clefs pour la littérature potentielle...
- Anne F. Garréta
- Michelle Grangaud
- Jacques JouetJacques JouetJacques Jouet is a French writer and has been a participating member of the Oulipo literary project since 1983.He is a poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayiste, and plasticine artist specializing in collages. As a member of l'Oulipo, Jouet became its focus in June 2009 when he...
- Latis (Emmanuel Peillet) †
- François Le LionnaisFrançois Le LionnaisFrançois Le Lionnais was a French chemical engineer and mathematician, perhaps best known as a founder of the literary movement Oulipo....
† - Hervé Le TellierHervé Le TellierHervé Le Tellier is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo...
- Jean LescureJean Lescure- Biography :In 1938 Jean Lescure published his first plaquette of poems, "Le voyage immobile", and launched the review "Messages" ....
† - Daniel Levin BeckerDaniel Levin BeckerDaniel Levin Becker is an American writer, translator and musical critic. He finished his undergraduate studies in English and French at Yale University in 2006. In 2009 he was elected member of the French literary workshop Oulipo, making him the second American member of this group...
- Harry MathewsHarry MathewsHarry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...
- Michèle Métail
- Ian MonkIan MonkIan Monk is a British writer and translator, based in Lille, France.-Biography:Since 1998, he has been a member of the French writing group Oulipo. Among his works in English are the books, Family Archaeology and Other Poems and Writings for the Oulipo...
- Oskar PastiorOskar PastiorOskar Pastior was a Romanian-born German poet and translator. He was the only German member of Oulipo....
† - Georges PerecGeorges PerecGeorges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
† - Raymond QueneauRaymond QueneauRaymond Queneau was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle .-Biography:Born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Queneau was the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot...
† - Jean Queval †
- Pierre RosenstiehlPierre RosenstiehlPierre Rosenstiehl is a French mathematician at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales . He is particularly active in graph theory and recognized for his work on planar graphs and graph drawing...
- Jacques RoubaudJacques RoubaudJacques Roubaud is a French poet and mathematician.Jacques Roubaud is a professor of poetry at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and he was a professor of Mathematics at University of Paris X...
- Olivier Salon
- Albert-Marie Schmidt †
External links
- Excerpts from the Oulipo Compendium
- A special Oulipo folio, Drunken Boat
- Monica de la Torre, "Oulipo", Poets.org Website
- Queneau, Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes, BevRowe, interactive version in French and English
- The N+7 Machine Official Oulipo Website Oulipo mailing list Oulipo Games Website
- Absurdist Monthly Review, The Writers Magazine of The New Absurdist Movement