Oulipo stands for "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle", which translates about when "workshop of potential literature". These are the free gathering of French-speaking writers & mathematicians, and tries to produce works utilizing constrained writing techniques. It was founded inside 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. More luminary members include novelists Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, and poet and mathematician Jacques Roubaud.

A class action defines a term 'littérature potentielle' when (rough out translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy".

Constraints come utilized as a means of triggering ideas & inspiration, virtually all notably Perec's "story-making machine" which he utilized in the construction of ''Life: A User's Manual''. Too when constituted techniques, like lipograms (Perec's novel A Void) and palindromes, a class action devises recently techniques, typically according to mathematical problems like the Knight's Tour of the chess-board and permutations.

History
Oulipo was founded in November Two dozen, 1960, as a subcommittee of the Collège de ‘Pataphysique entitled Séminaire de Littérature Expérimental. Still at their 2nd meeting, this number 1 title was withdrawn in favour now's Ouvroir delaware Littérature Potentielle, or even OuLiPo, at Albert-Marie Schmidt's guide. the idea, nonetheless, preceded a number one meeting by about deuce months, after a little class action met inside September at Cerisy-la-Salle for a colloquium in Queneau's function. When you took this seminar, Queneau & François Le Lionnais envisage the society.

In a period of the subsequent decade, Oulipo was lone seldom seeable en masse. As a subcommittee, it reported their function fully Collège diamond state 'Pataphysique within 1961. Additionally, Temps Mêlés devoted an issue to Oulipo around 1964, and Belgian radio broadcast one Oulipo meeting. Its members were, all a same, singly active around the period of these years, & the class action as a whole began to emerge from either obscurity in 1973 with the publication of La Littérature Potentielle, the collection of representative pieces.

Oulipian works
A select few examples of Oulipian writing:

Roubaud's La Belle Hortense, a impulsive detective story, in which sextuplet princes, tons brothers, come suspects. Everthing sextuplet come out successively, within the different sequence both instance. One of a sixer breaks a pattern: this occurs as clue that he is the perpetrator.

Queneau's Exercices de Style, inside which he tells the equivalent elementary story ninety-nine days, to each one in a different style.

Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards delaware Poèmes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems) is inspired by children's picture books where to each one site is turn over horizontal strips which may exist as turned independently, letting different pictures (unremarkably of humans) to be combined within numbers of ways. Queneau applies this system to poetry: a book contains X sonnets, each in the report. For both of these site is split into Xiv strips, one for each line. Andy skinner estimates in the introductory explanation that it would require just about 200 million years to see completely conceivable combinations.

Constraints
A select few Oulipian constraints:

A "S + 7" method: replenish each noun inside a text by having the word that lessens Septet pages ahead of it in the lexicon. So "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago..." (from either Moby Dick) becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...".

A captive's constraint (the.k.a the "macao" constraint) consists of writing the text applying there are no letters by using legs (i personally.e., b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, letter q, t, & y come banned).

Snowball: the verse form where to from each 1 one line occurs as lone word, & each consecutive word is one letter hanker.

Members
Founding members
the introduction members of Oulipo representing a range of intellectual pursuits including writers, university professors, mathematicians, engineers, and 'pataphysicians: Noël Arnaud Jacques Bens Claude Berge Jacques Duchateau Latis François Le Lionnais Jean Lescure Raymond Queneau Jean Queval Albert-Marie Schmidt

Members as of 2005
Note that Oulipo members come however considered members when their deaths, although dead members come excused from either meeting. Noël Arnaud Valérie Beaudouin Marcel Bénabou Jacques Bens Claude Berge André Blavier Paul Braffort Italo Calvino François Caradec Bernard Cerquiglini Ross Chambers Stanley Chapman Marcel Duchamp Jacques Duchateau Luc Etienne Frédéric Forte Paul Fournel Anne Garetta Michelle Grangaud Jacques Jouet Latis François Le Lionnais Hervé Le Tellier Jean Lescure Harry Mathews Michèle Métail Ian Monk Oskar Pastior Georges Perec Raymond Queneau Jean Queval Pierre Rosenstiehl Jacques Roubaud Olivier Salon Albert-Marie Schmidt