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Essay for Six Selections By The Oulipo: Getting Freedom from Contraints

Introduction

The text "Six Selections by the Oulipo" is a combination of 6 texts about Oulipo, which are:
One Hudred Thousand Billion Poems, Yours for the Telling by Raymond Queneau, A Brief History of the Oulipo by Jean Lescure, For a Potenteial Analysis of Combinatory Literature by Claude Berge, Computer and Writer: The Centre Pompidou Experiment by Paul Fournel and Prose and Anticombinatorics by Italo Calvino. Those articles give us a brief introduction, explanations and examples of Oulipo.
50 years ago, a group of French literatures lover established Oulipo (workshop of potential literature). Raymond Queneau (one of the original founders besides Francois Le Lionnais) noted that Oulipo is not a school of literature，a literature Seminer or experiments, but a natural, artificial and amusing workshop where people are able to make up their own writing rules and restricts, in order to spark inspirations and find the vieling possibilities of literature.
For instance: "Airplane" ( Abbreviation of words.The word "Jet" is the abbreviation abbreviation ), "Beau(belle) Present(e)" ( a poem which compound names of a person you cherished or hated ) or "s+n" ( replace each noun of an existing text by the "N"th noun after it found in a dictionary) etc.. .
In this essay, I will give my analysis of Oulipo from the perspective of the relationship between contraint and freedom of literature.

Body

Contraint

The core of Oulipo rules is based on setting writing rules, which can be considered as "an add operation which is based on subtraction". That is why Oulipo is distinctly different from current schools of literature: hyperration, behind-closed-doors, chasing for language skills and new forms. In another words, the artificial contraints are a symbol of Oulipo, with which writers can write in gameplay.

What are the Contraints

Language is a complicated container or system combining with different functional parts. However, from Oulipo writers' point of view, it can also be an objected self-supported subject. Putting contraints into language makes the linguistic functions under-controlled.
For example, Lipogram, which is known as one of Oulipo writing methods, sets up the rule as writing excluding one or more letters. In Dissappear , Georges Perec did not use the letter "e" which is the most common letter in French. In a report, Marcel Bénabou noted that during the period of writing this novel, Georges Perec listed all the words that he could use without "e", the list was endless.
Another typical work is One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems by Raymond Queneau. It "is a set of ten sonnets, printed on card with each line on a separated strip, like a heads-bodies-and-legs book, a type of children's book with which Queneau was familiar. As all ten sonnets have not just the same rhyme scheme but the same rhyme sounds, any lines from a sonnet can be combined with any from the nine others, so that there are 100,000,000,000,000 different poems". This work can be treated as a computer programme, which can be randomly or artificially made by audience. However, The work is readable and followed by sonnet rules strictly.

Common Point between Oulipo and the others

Functions of Contraint

Freedom

Maths, Philosophy, Oulipo

Back to Literature

Conclusion

Reference

Oulipo wiki

Notes Area

1. Intro:
    1.What is Oulipo
    2.Brief introduction of the texts.
2.Body:
    1.Contraint:
        1.Introduction of Contraint of Oulipo(rules and examples)
        2.Comparison the common point between Oulipo and Jueju, Couplet(Chinese Poetry)
        3.Contraint itself.
    2.Potential literature:
        1.Why Contraint is able to bring freedom(Maths, Philosophy)
        2.Back to literature
3.Conclusion:

就要写吐了......