Autobiographical Experiments

Dr Anna Kemp has been awarded a year-long Leverhulme Research Fellowship to complete her book Oulipography: Life as Creative Constraint. This monograph will be the first to focus on the extraordinary autobiographical work of the French experimental writing collective the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle  (OuLiPo). Its analysis of a substantial corpus, including work by Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, Marcel Bénabou and Anne F. Garréta, will invite a reconsideration both of the OuLiPo itself and the autobiographical traditions in which it (cautiously) partakes. It contests the view of oulipians as little more than disinterested formalists by analysing how their literary games engage creatively with memory, lived experience and the rules that govern everyday life, but it also considers how oulipian 'formalism' allows for a rethinking of autobiography as we know it.