The Penguin Book of Oulipo
- Submitting institution
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The University of Essex
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 2826
- Type
- V - Translation
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Penguin
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The Penguin Book of Oulipo is an output of 546 pages that is the culmination of over 20 years sustained research on Oulipo. Its complexity lies in its collection, translation, analysis and indexing of a large body of material, and its broadening of Oulipo to include not only precursors (“anticipatory plagiarists”), but offshoots in different disciplines (Ou-X-Pos) and writers with intersecting interests (such as the New York School). Primary sources were consulted in the Oulipo Archives in the Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal, Paris, and the Pataphysical Museum, London, and the little known Queneau Archive at the Bibliothèque Armand Salacrou, Le Havre.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- A fundamental research question was “What is Oulipo?”, both in terms of what is the nature of Oulipo (or Oulipian practice) and in terms of where its practices can be found in literary (and other) production. Oulipo is often defined, by themselves and others, as writing under “constraint”, but close examination reveals other strands, including similarities to translation practice and permutational algorithms. Findings were that Oulipo could be defined more usefully by a range of definitions rather than just “constraint” – a desedimentation of historical discussions throws up the word “structure” among others – and that Oulipianism existed in work from C5th China to New York School poetries and beyond, including practice in music and photography. Existing anthologies consist exclusively of writing by members of Oulipo, whereas Oulipo themselves talk of precursors, and offer their discoveries freely to writers outside Oulipo, suggesting that Oulipian practices are more widespread. The originality of this anthology is thus to broaden the concept of the Oulipian into these wider areas. A supplementary question was how translate Oulipo? Translation, it was found, can broadly choose between options: (a) literal translation (often ignoriing the “constraint”); (b) translations following the “constraint” (often altering literal sense).
The research process has been a diverse reading (and translating) of materials during a 20 year period, examining material from over 15 countries. Primary sources were consulted in Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal Oulipo Archives, Paris; Pataphysical Museum, London; and Queneau Archive, Bibliothèque Armand Salacrou, Le Havre.
Dissemination of findings has been through book publication, book launches, conferences (eg. Expanded Translation, Bangor, 2018) and public lectures as at Aldeburgh Poetry 2020, and supplementary writing (eg. “On Editing the Penguin Book of Oulipo”, Irish Times January 2021). The book was a Guardian Book of the Week, and a TLS Book of the Year 2020.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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