OuLiPo group Potential Literature Ouvroir de Littérature.ppt

OuLiPo group: Potential Literature Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle SM2220/6305 The Writing Machine February 1, 2005 Linda Lai OuLiPo: Brief History Founder: Francois Le Lionnais First meeting: November 1960 (then still called S.L.E., meaning “seminar of experimental literature”) S.L.E. renamed Oulipo on December 19, `60 Activities: composition of poems 1973: Publication of La Littérature potentielle ? Oulipo began to affirm itself openly OuLiPo: Brief History Key Players: Fran?ois Le Lionnais, Albert-Marie Schmidt, Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Duchateau, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, Luc Etienne, Marcel Benabou, Paul Fournel, Italo Calvino Oulipo: definition of the groups’ works Formal innovation Raymond Queneau: Potential literature is “the search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit.” Fran?ois Le Lionnais: “The Oulipo’s goal is to discover new structures and to furnish for each structure a small number of examples.” OuLiPo: seminal work Raymond Queneau is known to have nourished the directed the evolution of the group. One of the exemplary works of the group is by him: Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes [a hundred thousand billion poems] A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems “Potential” literature If one spends 1 minute to read 1 sonnet, 8 hours a day, 200 days per year, it would take more than a million centuries to finish the text. …towards technical superiority See digital work One Hundred Million Poems:/_massin/massin_small.html OuLiPo: Brief History Key Concern: “Every literary work begins with an inspiration…which must accommodate itself as well as possible to a series of constraints and procedures.” (Lionnais) OuLiPo: Brief History Position on Literature: [literary madness] “The only literature is voluntary literature.” (Raymond Queneau) *This implies the revolutionary conception of the objectivity of literature ? i.e. opens literature to all possibil