How to Do Things with Forms
eBook - ePub

How to Do Things with Forms

The Oulipo and Its Inventions

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

How to Do Things with Forms

The Oulipo and Its Inventions

About this book

The Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature) is a literary think tank that brings together writers and mathematicians. Since 1960, its worldwide influence has refreshed ways of making and thinking about literature.

How to Do Things with Forms assesses the work of the group, explores where it came from, and envisages its future. Redefining the Oulipo's key concept of the constraint in a clear and rigorous way, Chris Andrews weighs the roles of craft and imitation in the group's practice. He highlights the importance of translation for the Oulipo's writers, explaining how their new forms convey meanings and how these famously playful authors are also moved by serious concerns. Offering fresh interpretations of emblematic Oulipian works such as Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, Andrews also examines lesser-known texts by Jacques Roubaud, Anne F. Garréta, and Michelle Grangaud.

How to Do Things with Forms addresses questions of interest to anyone involved in the making of literature, illuminating how writers decide when to stop revising, the risks and benefits of a project mentality in creative writing, and ways of holding a reader's interest for as long as possible.

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Yes, you can access How to Do Things with Forms by Chris Andrews in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Modern Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Copyright
  3. Contents
  4. Tables and Figures
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Abbreviations
  7. Note on Translations
  8. Members of the Oulipo(by Year of Co-optation)
  9. Introduction
  10. 1 What the Oulipo Was Not
  11. 2 Kinds of Rules
  12. 3 Automation, Craft, and Imitation
  13. 4 Manipulation, Translation, and Composition
  14. 5 Meaningful Forms and Clinamen
  15. 6 Revelation and Dissimulation
  16. 7 Games Gone Wrong
  17. 8 Potentiality, Uptake, and Spread
  18. 9 What Has Become of the Oulipo?
  19. Notes
  20. Bibliography
  21. Index