Scope and Contents Oulipo is an acronym for Ouvoir de Litterature Potentielle. The texts, edited and translated by Motte, "have been chosen to provide a sampler of Oulipian poetic theory, from the polemical language of the early manifestos to the more elaborate formulations of a startling literary aesthetic." Raymond Queneau nourished and directed the evolution of the group. His definition of the work is "potential literature that is the search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit." Queneau's work, "Cent Mille Millards de poems - One hundred thousand billion poems" is regarded as the seminal Oulipian text and "echoes throughout the essays in this collection and permeates the Oulipian enterprise as a whole."The history of Oulipo, that formed in 1960, is provided in an introductory essay. The end of the book provides a Glossary of linguistic terms. The Glossary includes names of Oulipian and pre-Oulipian poetic structures, as well as figures of classical...

Scope and Contents

Motte provides a critical analysis of Perec's lipogram novel, "La Disparition." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

The author writes that this study was intended as an introduction to the work of Georges Perec and was designed to accompany a reading of his texts. Motte attempts to develop the outline of a post-modern literary career and to present a coherent exposition of Perec's poetic theory. He organized the study into the following chapters: formal constraint, autoreference, the game, description, the letter, dream and memory, and metaliterature. It includes 22 texts from 1965 to 1981. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.