Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: "workshop of potential literature."
OuLiPo was co-founded in Paris the early 1960's by mathematician and writer Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais. In writing texts under self-imposed constraints, Oulipian writers believe they stimulate the creativity and imagination of the writer. Constraints push writers into new linguistic territories--one might say that in Oulipian work is a sort of ongoing investigation into language itself: language is conceived as a complex system made up of a finite number of components, and constraints force the linguistic system's itinerary off its usual well-trodden paths.
