Oulipo and Modern Thought

The impact of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) one of the most important groups of experimental writers of the late twentieth century is still being felt in contemporary literature criticism and theory both in Europe and the US. Founded in 1960 and still active today this Parisian literary workshop has featured among its members such notable writers as Italo Calvino Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau all sharing in its light-hearted slightly boozy <em>bonhomie</em> the convivial antithesis of the fractious volatile coteries of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. For the last fifty years the Oulipo has undertaken the same simple goal: to investigate the potential of 'constraints' in the production of literature--that is formal procedures such as anagrams acrostics lipograms (texts which exclude a certain letter) and other strange and complex devices. <p/>Yet far from being mere parlour games these methods have been frequently used as part of a passionate--though sometimes satirical--involvement with the major intellectual currents of the mid-twentieth century. Structuralism psychoanalysis Surrealism analytic philosophy: all come under discussion in the group's meetings and all find their way in the group's exercises in ways that while often ironic are also highly informed. <p/>Using meeting minutes correspondence and other material from the Oulipo archive at the Bibliotheque nationale de France <em>The Oulipo and Modern Thought</em> shows how the group have used constrained writing as means of puckish engagement with the debates of their peers and how as the broader intellectual landscape altered so too would the group's conception of what constrained writing can achieve.<br>