OULIPO: JUEGOS MATEMÁTICOS EN LA LITERATURA

OuLiPo – Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle – was created in 1960 at the initiative of Raymond Queneau – a man of letters interested in mathematics – and François Le Lionnais – a man of science interested in literature –, and supported by a group of writers , mathematicians and painters. OuLiPo rejects inspiration as the only source of creativity; the restriction – the ‘contrainte’ – is its creative engine. In this paper we will give some examples of oulipian texts written under mathematical restriction. Essentially, mathematics underlies the structure of texts: combinatorics, geometry, topology or graph theory will appear as inspiring patterns in all these proposals.