Jacques Roubaud And the Invention of Memory

Jean-Jacques Poucel provides a comprehensive introduction to the poetry and novels of Jacques Roubaud, a prominent member of the French experimental group OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop of Potential Literature). Drawing from a variety of literary theories, Poucel argues that the Oulipian practice of writing under constraint provides a new vehicle for literary memory, one that strengthens the terms by which poetic traditions are condensed, transformed, and transmitted. In addition to situating the importance of Roubaud’s work within a broad contemporary context, the eight chapters of this study focus on the specific sites of interest in some of Roubaud’s favorite source texts, including key fragments culled from troubadour poetry, the tradition of the sonnet and the Canzoniere, Japanese short forms (waka), early surrealist writing, the mathematics of Bourbaki, and the work of Oulipian writers such as Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and Italo Calvino.