The beginning of Oulipo? An attempt to rediscover a movement

Abstract

This article addresses recent criticism of the French literary movement Oulipo, demonstrating that such criticism is partly grounded in the tendency for scholars and even Oulipo members themselves to interpret early poetic forms of the group, for example, Raymond Queneau's A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, through the theory of textual generation through strict constraint developed significantly later in the group's history. The article posits that, when duly analysed, these early forms run counter to the later notion of textual generation, align in a certain way with contemporary ‘Uncreative Writing’, and open new possibilities for rethinking the contemporary significance of the Oulipo and questioning the postmodern poetic project generally.