Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

s who seek to create works using

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 (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo (''Ouvroir de littérature potentielle Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentiell ...

and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members have included

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while othe ...

s Georges Perec and

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

, poets

Oskar Pastior Oskar Pastior (; 20 October 1927 – 4 October 2006) was a Romanian-born German poet and translator. He was the only German member of Oulipo. Biography Born into a Transylvanian Saxon family in Sibiu (Hermannstadt), he was deported in January 19 ...

and 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". Queneau described Oulipians as "rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape." 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 A lipogram (from grc, λειπογράμματος, ''leipográmmatos'', "leaving out a letter") 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 ...

s (Perec's novel ''

A Void ''A Void'', translated from the original French ( "The Disappearance"), is a 300-page French lipogrammatic novel, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without using the letter '' e'', following Oulipo constraints. Translations It was ...

'') and

palindrome A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Panam ...

s, the group devises new methods, often based on mathematical problems, such as the knight's tour of the

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

-board and permutations.

History

Oulipo was founded on November 24, 1960, as a subcommittee of the

Collège de 'Pataphysique Pataphysics (french: 'pataphysique) is a "philosophy" of science invented by French writer Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) intended to be a parody of science. Difficult to be simply defined or pinned down, it has been described as the "science of imag ...

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 Albert-Marie Schmidt (10 October 1901 – 8 February 1966) was a French linguist and one of the founding members of the Oulipo. In 1960, the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of John Calvin, Schmidt wrote a comprehensive introdu ...

's suggestion. The idea had arisen two months earlier, when a small group met in September at

Cerisy-la-Salle Cerisy-la-Salle () is a commune in the Manche department in Normandy in north-western France.François Le Lionnais conceived 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, ' 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 ', a collection of representative pieces.

Martin Gardner Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of L ...

helped to popularize the group in America when he featured Oulipo in his February 1977 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. In 2012 Harvard University Press published a history of the movement, ''Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature'', by Oulipo member

Daniel Levin Becker Daniel Levin Becker (born in 1984 in Chicago) is an American writer, translator and musical critic. Life In 2006, he finished his undergraduate studies in English and French at Yale University, where he also wrote for campus humor magazine '' ...

. Oulipo was founded by a group of men in 1960 and it took 15 years before the first woman was allowed to join; this was

Michèle Métail Michele (), is an Italian male given name, akin to the English male name Michael. Michele (pronounced ), is also an English female given name that is derived from the French Michèle. It is a variant spelling of the more common (and identicall ...

who became a member in 1975 and has since distanced herself from the group. Since 1960 only six women have joined Oulipo, with

Clémentine Mélois ''Clémentine'' (pronounced ) was a 1985 French animated television series (in co-production with Japan). The series consisted of 39 episodes which featured the fantastic adventures of a 10-year-old girl (Clémentine Dumat) who uses a wheelchai ...

last to join in June 2017.

Oulipian works

Some examples of Oulipian writing: * Queneau's '' Exercices de 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 Poèmes Cent may refer to: Currency * Cent (currency), a one-hundredth subdivision of several units of currency * Penny (Canadian coin), a Canadian coin removed from circulation in 2013 * 1 cent (Dutch coin), a Dutch coin minted between 1941 and 1944 * ...

'' 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

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's inventio ...

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 ''A Void'', translated from the original French ( "The Disappearance"), is a 300-page French lipogrammatic novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present Eng ...

,'' translated into English by

Gilbert Adair Gilbert Adair (29 December 19448 December 2011) was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic, and journalist.Stuart Jeffries and Ronald BerganObituary: Gilbert Adair ''The Guardian'', 9 December 2011. He was critically most famous for the "fien ...

and published under the title ''

'', is a 300-page novel written without the letter "e", an example of a

. 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 Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...

'' by Harry Mathews 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 N+7 : Replace every noun in a text with the seventh noun 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 Rhopalism : A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. ;

Stile A stile is a structure or opening that provides people passage over or through a boundary via steps, ladders, or narrow gaps. Stiles are often built in rural areas along footpaths, fences, walls, or hedges that enclose animals, allowing peopl ...

: A method wherein each “new” sentence in a paragraph stems from the last word or phrase in the previous sentence (e.g. “I descend the long ladder brings me to the ground floor is spacious…”). In this technique the sentences in a narrative continually overlap, often turning the grammatical object in a previous sentence into the grammatical subject of the next. The author may also pivot on an adverb, prepositional phrase, or other transitory moment. ;

Lipogram A lipogram (from grc, λειπογράμματος, ''leipográmmatos'', "leaving out a letter") 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 ...

: Writing that excludes one or more letters. The previous sentence is a lipogram in B, F, J, K, Q, V, Y, and Z (it does not contain any of those letters). ; Prisoner's constraint Macao constraint : A type of lipogram that omits letters with ascenders and

descender In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' ...

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 univocalic is a type of antilipogrammatic constrained writing that uses only a single vowel, in English "A", "E", "I", "O", or "U", and no others. Examples *One of the best-known univocalic poems was written by C.C. Bombaugh in 1890 using "O". ...

: A poem using only one vowel letter. In English and some other languages the same vowel letter can represent different sounds, which means that, for example, "born" and "cot" could both be used in a univocalism. (Words with the same American English vowel sound but represented by different 'vowel' letters could not be used – e.g. "blue" and "stew".) ; Mathews' Algorithm: Elements in a text are moved around by a set of predetermined rules

Members

Founding members

The founding members of Oulipo represented a range of

intellectual An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator o ...

pursuits, including writers,

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

s, mathematicians,

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

s, and " pataphysicians": * * Jacques Bens * Claude Berge * * ("Latis") * François Le Lionnais * Jean Lescure *

* Jean Queval *

Living members

Michèle Audin Michèle Audin ( Algiers, 3 January, 1954) is a French mathematician, writer, and a former professor. She has worked as a professor at the University of Geneva, the University of Paris-Saclay and most recently at the University of Strasbourg, wh ...

* *

Marcel Bénabou Marcel Bénabou (29 June 1939, Meknes in Morocco) is a French writer and historian. Biography ''Emeritus'' professor of Roman history at the Paris Diderot University, Marcel Bénabou's work focuses on ancient Rome, in particular North Africa ...

Eduardo Berti Eduardo Berti (1964) is an Argentine writer born in Buenos Aires. He has been living in Paris, France, since 1998. He also works as a cultural journalist. Biography His novel ''La mujer de Wakefield'', a re-write of Nathaniel Hawthorne's ''Wakef ...

Bernard Cerquiglini Bernard Cerquiglini (born 8 April 1947 in Lyon, France), 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 o ...

* * Paul Fournel * Anne F. Garréta * Jacques Jouet * Hervé Le Tellier * Étienne Lécroart *

* * * Ian Monk * Jacques Roubaud * *

Deceased members

* * Jacques Bens * Claude Berge *

André Blavier André Blavier (23 October 1922 – 12 June 2001) was a Belgian poet. From 1961 he was a member of the literary group Oulipo and served as their foreign correspondent.Elkin, Lauren, & Esposito, Scott (2012). The End of Oulipo?: An Attempt to Exhau ...

* *

* * * Stanley Chapman *

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

* * Luc Etienne *

Michelle Grangaud Michelle Grangaud (11 October 1941 – 15 January 2022) was a French poet. Biography During her childhood, Grangaud discovered the works of Marcel Proust. In 1962, she left Algeria and settled in Montpellier. In 1987, she published ''Mémento- ...

* ("Latis") * François Le Lionnais * Jean Lescure * Harry Mathews *

* Georges Perec *

* Jean Queval * Pierre Rosenstiehl *

History

Oulipian works

Constraints

Members

Founding members

Living members

Deceased members

See also

References

Further reading

External links