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A mapping of the work of Georges Perec and the OuLiPo group - Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop of Potential Literature, a group of writers and mathematicians formed in 1960.
Perec and other OULIPO members were interested in the materiality of the text, using games and strategies to produce works via generative processes. They sought to apply the notion of constraint (as opposed to inspiration) as a creative strategy and used two terms: analysis, by which they uncovered experimental forms of the past (such as Perec's work on the Lipogram) and synthesis, through which new forms were developed, especially under the influence of mathematical structures. They appear to take their cue from Prosody - a set of disciplines found within poetry (and something you may wish to research). Of special interest was 'combinatorics' as exemplified by the key OULIPO work 'Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes' (one hundred thousand billion poems) by Queneau in which ten sonnets (14 line poems) could have any of their lines replaced by any of the other lines of the remaining nine poems - giving the possible number of unique combinations as 10 to the power of 14, hence the title. Although the OULIPO were/are dedicated, disciplined, rigorous and learned, the tone of the work is always playful: 'I am working for people who are primarily intelligent, rather than serious' P. Féval (Motte 1998: 29). and self-aware: 'Oulipans: rats who must build the labyrinth from which they propose to escape' (Motte 1998: 22). Some forms: Acrostic - a short text (sometimes poem) in which the first, last or middle letters (or all) of the lines spell a word, phrase or sentence Beau Present - a special form of acrostic in which the letters of a chosen name are encoded in the text, in order Belle Absent - the inverse of the above in which the letters of a chosen name are conspicuous by their absense (poss. a special type of lipogram) Cento - a text made from sections from other texts Haiku - three line poem of oriental origin in which two seemingly incompatible images are united by the third line. Each line also has a fixed syllable count, usually 5,7,5. Haikuization - the taking of the rhyming parts of an existing poem to form a new, condensed work Lipogram - a text in which a certain letter or letters are deliberately not used (Perec's 300 page novel, 'La Disparation' does not use the letter 'e') Palindrome - a text which is the same read backwards as well as forwards Pangram - a text containing all the letters of the alphabet S + 7 - a text in which every noun is replaced with the word that falls 7 places ahead of it in the dictionary (the 7 is abitrary - you could choose your own number i.e. S + n) Snowball - a text in which each line is longer than the one preceeding it (a 'melting snowball' is obtained by halfway through inverting the rule i.e. each line becomes shorter than the one preceeding it) Sonnet - A 14 line poem with a defined ryhme scheme some of the above were elaborated upon or defined by OULIPO members, some are preexisting structures References Books Perec, Georges (trans. D. Bellos), (1987), Life: a User's Manual, Boston: Godine Perec, Georges, (1994), La Disparation (translated by Gilbert Adair as 'A Void'), London: Harvill this novel is famous for being written without once using the letter 'e' and was preceded by the 1939 novel: Gadsby: Champion of Youth by Ernest Vincent Wright Perec, Georges, (1999), 'Species of Spaces and Other Pieces', Penguin* Fenton, James, (2002), 'An Introduction to English Poetry', Viking Matthews, Harry and Ian White (trans.), (1995), 'Oulipo Laboratory', Atlas Anti Classics Motte, Warren F., (1998), 'Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature', Dalkey Archive Press* * especially recommended for initial research --------------------------------------------- Links Perec & OULIPO Georges Perec - a life: French novelist, poet, essayist, dramatist, and literary innovator, who gained fame with his formally complex and puzzling works after the nouveau roman had lost its experimentalist freshness. Perec's most famous books include La Disparation (1969, A Void), a 300-page novel written without the letter e, and La Vie mode d'emploi (1978, Life: A User's Manual). "It was in the final months of his life that the artist Serge Valene conceived the idea of a painting that would reassemble his entire existence: everything his memory had recorded, all the sensations that had swept over him, all his fantasies, his passions, his hates would be recorded on canvas, a compendium of minute parts of which the sum would be his life." (from Life: A User's Manual) from: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/perec.htm *** In 1969, Perec wrote the lipogrammatic novel La Disparition. The more obvious translation for that title would be The Disappearance, were it nor for the small detail that the novel is a lipogram in E. The US translation, by Gilbert Adair, was titled A Void. It is the story of the disappearance of a man; and in the world from where that man disappeared, the letter "E" disappeared as well, but nobody (except for the reader) notices the Kabbalah of substitutions, similes, distortions, variants and the endless tricks that such a Universe builds to fill that void. In that world where "Anton Voyl" in French, "Anton Vowl" in English, is searched in vain by his friends, the well-known soliloquy penned by one William Shakspar runs: Living,
or not living: that is what I ask:
from: http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/perec.html batmemes
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