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tags: Experiments Literature
rel: Italo Calvino Spliced Book - Alternative Reading Methods
Oulipo french shortening of workshop of potential literature is a gathering of mainly French-speaking writers and mathematicians to create works using constrained writing techniques.
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.”
Created as a subcommittee of Pataphysics.
Examples
- Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes 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 sonnets, 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.
Constraints
- S+7: replace every noun with the seventh noun after it in the dictionary
- Snowball: each line is a single word, and each successive sentence is on word longer
- Lipogram: writing that excludes one letter
- 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…”)
- Mathews’ Algorithm: elements in a text are moved around by a set of predetermined rules