WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/westminsterresearch The Oulipo and Modernism: Literature, Craft and Mathematical Form Cartwright, D. This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © Dr Daniel Cartwright, 2019. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Whilst further distribution of specific materials from within this archive is forbidden, you may freely distribute the URL of WestminsterResearch: ((http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/). In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail
[email protected] The Oulipo and Modernism Literature, Craft and Mathematical Form Daniel Cartwright A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2019 Abstract The Oulipo is known primarily for the use of formal constraints in writing. The constraint is an arbitrary application of rigorously defined formal demands (often drawn from mathematics) in the process of literary or poetic composition. The group was founded in 1960, and their remit was limited to the formulation of constraints rather than literary texts. There is thus no literary theory proposed by the Oulipo, and little in the way of critical interpretation of their methods in terms of its wider sig- nificance to the condition of art in the period of their emergence. Their approach is often counterposed to the Surrealists: where the Surrealist response to the conditions of rationalised modernity attempted to explore the unconscious, the non-rational and chance, the Oulipo’s use of constraints is consciously determined and resists the pas- sivity of chance.