On Literature and Teaching

  The authorial intention: OULIPO and the transformation of literature The OULIPO is a group of writers, scientists and poets that was founded in 1960 in France by two men, one of whom remains very famous to this day: Raymond Queneau – the other was François Le Lionnais. You probably know Queneau for one of two things (or both, of course): Zazie dans le métro , and Exercices de style ( or perhaps, too, for his Cent mille milliards de poèmes - A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems) . The first is a slim, quirky novel that mixes registers and tries to transcribe spoken vernacular language, and the second is a magnificent exercise in writing technique: one simple, banal scene told in 99 different ways according to grammar, tone, style and more. Incidentally, teachers and learners of literature should all have a copy of Exercices de style : it has been translated in more than twenty-five languages so you should be able to find a copy you can read. Queneau had studied philosophy but he...