Oulipo (, short for ; roughly translated as "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. D ...

techniques. It was founded in 1960 by

Raymond Queneau Raymond Auguste Queneau (; ; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo (), notable for his wit and cynical humour. Biography Queneau, the only child of Auguste Que ...

and

François Le Lionnais François Le Lionnais (3 October 1901 – 13 March 1984) was a French chemical engineer and writer. He was a co-founder of the literary movement Oulipo. Biography Le Lionnais was born in Paris on 3 October 1901. Trained as a chemical eng ...

. 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 other ...

Georges Perec Georges Perec (; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Ho ...

and

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

, 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) in the Kingdom of Romania, he ...

and

Jean Lescure Jean Lescure (; 14 September 1912 – 17 October 2005) was a French poet. Biography Lescure was born in Asnières-sur-Seine. In 1938, he published his first plaquette of poems, "Le voyage immobile", and launched the review "Messages" (two iss ...

, and poet/mathematician

Jacques Roubaud Jacques Roubaud (; 5 December 1932 – 5 December 2024) was a French poet, writer, and mathematician. Life and career Jacques Roubaud taught mathematics at University of Paris X Nanterre and poetry at EHESS. A member of the Oulipo group, he h ...

. 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 , ''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 avoided.McArthur, Tom (1992). ''The ...

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. Perec would go on to ...

'') and

palindrome A palindrome (Help:IPA/English, /ˈpæl.ɪn.droʊm/) is a word, palindromic number, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date "Twosday, 02/02/2020" and th ...

s, the group devises new methods, often based on mathematical problems, such as the

knight's tour A knight's tour is a sequence of moves of a knight on a chessboard such that the knight visits every square exactly once. If the knight ends on a square that is one knight's move from the beginning square (so that it could tour the board again im ...

of the

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

-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 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 John Calvin (; ; ; 10 July 1 ...

'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 François Le Lionnais (3 October 1901 – 13 March 1984) was a French chemical engineer and writer. He was a co-founder of the literary movement Oulipo. Biography Le Lionnais was born in Paris on 3 October 1901. Trained as a chemical eng ...

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 magic, scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writin ...

helped to popularize the group in America when he featured Oulipo in his February 1977

Mathematical Games column Over a period of 24 years (January 1957 – December 1980), Martin Gardner wrote 288 consecutive monthly "Mathematical Games" columns for ''Scientific American'' magazine. During the next years, until June 1986, Gardner wrote 9 more columns, br ...

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 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 '' Yale R ...

. 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 (usually 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 iden ...

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 ) is a 1985 French animated television series (in co-production with Japan). The series consists of 39 episodes which feature the fantastic adventures of a 10-year-old girl (Clémentine Dumat) who uses a wheelchair. T ...

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 fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

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, written in 1969 by Georges Perec, entirely without using the letter '' e'', following Oulipo constraints. Perec would go on to w ...

,'' 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. Perec would go on to write with the inverse constraint in ''Les Revenents'', with only the vowel “e” present in the work.

Ian Monk Ian Monk (born 1960) is a British writer and translator, based in Paris, France.Ian Monk
Oulipo website (retrieved 29 de ...

would later translate ''Les Revenents'' into English under the title ''The Exeter Text.'' * '' Singular Pleasures'' by

Harry Mathews Harry Mathews (February 14, 1930 – January 25, 2017) was an American writer, the author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays. Mathews was also a translator of the French language. Life Born in New York City to an ...

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 Ishmael. Some yes-men ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used. This technique can also be performed on other lexical classes, such as verbs. ;

Snowball A snowball is a sphere, spherical object made from snow, usually created by scooping snow with the hands and pressing the snow together to compact it into a ball. Snowballs are often used in games such as snowball fights. A snowball may also be ...

Rhopalism : A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. ; Stile: 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 , ''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 avoided.McArthur, Tom (1992). ''The ...

: 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 grapheme that extends below the Baseline (typography), baseline of a typeface, font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal li ...

s (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y). ;

Palindromes A palindrome ( /ˈpæl.ɪn.droʊm/) is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as ''madam'' or '' racecar'', the date " 02/02/2020" and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Pana ...

: Sonnets and other poems constructed using palindromic techniques. ; Eodermdrome: Use of words constructed from a set of letters in such a way that they have a non-planar spelling net. ; Univocalism: 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".) ;

Pilish Pilish is a style of constrained writing in which the lengths of consecutive words or sentences match the digits of the number ( pi). The shortest example is any three-letter word, such as "hat", but many longer examples have been constructed, i ...

: A method of writing wherein one matches the length of words (or number of words in a sentence) to the digits of pi. ; 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 Human self-reflection, reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the wor ...

pursuits, including writers,

university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

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

s, mathematicians,

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

s, and " pataphysicians."

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, where ...

* *

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 dur ...

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 ''Wakefi ...

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 ...

* *

Paul Fournel Paul Fournel (born 20 May 1947 in Saint-Étienne) is a French writer, poet, publisher, and cultural ambassador. He was educated at the École normale supérieure of Saint-Cloud (1968–1972). Fournel wrote his master's thesis on Raymond Queneau a ...

* Anne F. Garréta *

Jacques Jouet image:Jacques Jouet salon du Livre 2012 (cropped).jpg, Jacques Jouet in 2012. Jacques Jouet (born 9 October 1947) is a French writer and has been a participating member of the Oulipo literary project since 1983. He is a poet, novelist, short stor ...

Hervé Le Tellier Hervé Le Tellier (; born 21 April 1957) is a French writer and linguistics, linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature") ...

Étienne Lécroart Étienne Lécroart (born 1960) is a French cartoonist. He is a founder and key member of Oubapo association, Ouvroir de BAnde dessinée POtentielle. He has composed cartoons that could be read either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and vi ...

* * * *

Ian Monk Ian Monk (born 1960) is a British writer and translator, based in Paris, France.Ian Monk
Oulipo website (retrieved 29 de ...

Deceased members

* *

Jacques Bens Jacques Bens (25 March 1931 – 26 July 2001) was a French writer and poet. Biography Born of teacher-parents at Cadolive, Jacques Bens spent his childhood and his youth in Marseilles, where his studies in zoology were interrupted in 1951 ...

Claude Berge Claude Jacques Berge (5 June 1926 – 30 June 2002) was a French mathematician, recognized as one of the modern founders of combinatorics and graph theory. Biography and professional history Claude Berge's parents were André Berge and Genevièv ...

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 E ...

* *

* * *

Stanley Chapman Stanley Chapman (15 September 1925 – 26 May 2009) 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 Oul ...

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, Futurism and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Pica ...

* * Luc Etienne * Michelle Grangaud * ("Latis") *

Jean Queval Jean Queval (1913 in Paris –1990 in Fontainebleau) was a French translator, writer, journalist, film critic, and founding member of the literary movement Oulipo. References

1913 births 1990 deaths 20th-century French writers Oulipo me ...

Pierre Rosenstiehl Pierre Rosenstiehl (5 December 1933 – 28 October 2020) was a French mathematician recognized for his work in graph theory, planar graphs, and graph drawing. The Fraysseix-Rosenstiehl's planarity criterion is at the origin of the left-right pl ...

History

Oulipian works

Constraints

Members

Founding members

Living members

Deceased members

See also

References

Further reading

External links