Oulipo

From monstrouspossibility

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Oulipo as a group of writers and mathematicians concerned with the exploration and application of linguistic structures and constraints with respect to their potential for producing literary works. At its basic level Oulipo (often written OuLiPo, as it is an anagram of "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle", which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature") seeks to open pathways of expression through the implementation of constraints upon their writings. The group, founded in 1960 by François Le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau, meets yearly in Paris to discuss their works and collaborate on new constraints. As the group itself is French, a lot of the websites about Oulipo are in French, the links given here are all in English.

[edit] works/references

• Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes by Raymond Queneau
• If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
• Les Revenentes by Georges Perec
• La Bibliotheque Oulipienne by the members of OuLiPo
• Oulipo Compendium by Harry Matthews
• Oulipo Laboratory by the members of OuLiPo
• Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature by Warren F. Motte
• Who Killed the Duke of Densmore? by Claude Berge

[edit] articles

Oulipo Service Jonathan Bing of The Village Voice reviews Oulipo Compendium by Harry Matthews

[1] Warren F. Motte reviews La Bibliotheque Oulipienne in Poetics Today, Vol. 3, No. 3

Oulipo Ends Where the Work Begins Christopher R. Beha discusses Oulipo in The Believer, includes his own exercises using constraints

[edit] websites

Oulipo provides examples of Oulipo works and links to other relevant sites

The Oulipo overview of Oulipo by Gordon Dow

Wikipedia wikipedia entry on Oulipo, includes a list of writers within the group

The Oulipo: Constraints and Collaboration essay about Oulipo by William Gillespie

(Following section by Lily Greeniaus)

“Oulipo” is a word that evolved from an acronym of the French, Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, which means Workshop of Potential Literature. Its cofounders include François Le Lionnais and Raymond Queneau [2]. Queneau was composing his famous 100,000,000,000,000 Poems, which is made of ten sonnets whose lines can be interchanged in every possible combination – hence the 14 zeros. When he ran into difficulty, he sought the advice of Le Lionnais whose values bore a stark contrast to those of the undisciplined, impulsive Surrealism, which Queneau, unwilling to forsake his interest in mathematics [3], abandoned after a few years of exploration by the 1930s 

[4]. Le Lionnais was a mathematician and a student of chess as well as scientific theories. The dialogue between the two increased their mutual fascination with the relationship between literature and mathematics, and the potential for creativity therein. This motivated them to create a group that would create mathematical constraints on written literature.

In his introduction to Oulipo Compendium, Jacques Roubaud writes: “The limiting and at the same time crucial role of mathematics in Oulipian art represents an intentional choice on the part of its founders. Their basic reason was that, in Queneau’s and Le Lionnais’s view, after the exhaustion of the generative power of literary constraints, only mathematics would offer a way out between a nostalgic obstinacy with worn-out modes of expression and an intellectually pathetic belief in ‘total freedom’. […] The reasoning is as follows: ‘asserting one’s freedom” in art makes sense only referentially – it is an act of destroying traditional artistic methods’.” For members of Oulipo, real freedom lies in mastering difficulty.

In order to understand how these difficulties arise, examples of Oulipian constraints are useful. The number of constraints produced by the group is staggering, as it meets once a month, intent on producing more. A few include:

• The lipogram: a text that excludes one or more letters of the alphabet.
• The Prisoner’s Restriction: a multiple lithogram based on the situation of a prisoner on a meager ration of paper, who therefore would exclude letters that require a greater heighth of space (b, d, f, g, h, k, l, p, q, t, y…).
• The Line Stretcher’s Restriction (of “larding”): Inspired by the 19th century magazine’s method of paying contributors per line, motivating writers to extend their pieces. In the restriction, an Oulipian author takes a small number of sentences (often only two) and adds a new one between each. This continues (a new sentence between every pair) until a desirable length is obtained. The author’s additions must have coherent, continuous narrative.
• The N+7 Restriction: One of the most famous/notorious restrictions, in which its seventh follower out of the dictionary replaces every noun of a text. An example:

In the beguinage God created the hebdomad and the earthfall. And the earthfall was without formalization, and void; and darnex was upon the facette of the deerhair. And the spiritlessness of God moved upon the facette of the watercolorist. And God said, let there be lightface: and there was lightface.

Two volumes have been published under the Oulipo name: in 1973, La Litterature Potentialle and in 1981, L’Atlas de Litterature Potentialle.

Wikipedia has a substantive list of contemporary members: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo#Members_as_of_2006

Other relevant links include:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060612223506/

http://www.oulipocompendium.com/

http://drunkenboat.com/db8/index.html

http://www.growndodo.com/wordplay/oulipo/index.html

And if you can read French… http://www.oulipo.net/

(My primary and unlinked source is the Oulipio Compendum: Mathews, Harry & Brotchie, Alastair. Oulipo compendium. London: Atlas, 1998.)