The impact of the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle), one of the most important groups of experimental writers of the late twentieth century, is still being felt in contemporary literature, criticism, and theory, both in Europe and the US. Founded in 1960 and still active today, this Parisian literary workshop has featured among its members such notable writers as Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Raymond Queneau, all sharing in its light-hearted, slightly boozy bonhomie, the convivial antithesis of the fractious, volatile coteries of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. For the last fifty years the Oulipo has undertaken the same simple goal: to investigate the potential of 'constraints' in the production of literature--that is, formal procedures such as anagrams, acrostics, lipograms (texts which exclude a certain letter), and other strange and complex devices. Yet, far from being mere parlour games, these methods have been frequently used as part of a passionate--though sometimes satirical--involvement with the major intellectual currents of the mid-twentieth century. Structuralism, psychoanalysis, Surrealism, analytic philosophy: all come under discussion in the group's meetings, and all find their way in the group's exercises in ways that, while often ironic, are also highly informed. Using meeting minutes, correspondence, and other material from the Oulipo archive at the Bibliotheque nationale de France, The Oulipo and Modern Thought shows how the group have used constrained writing as means of puckish engagement with the debates of their peers, and how, as the broader intellectual landscape altered, so too would the group's conception of what constrained writing can achieve.

The Oulipo and Modern Thought

Literature & Fiction

Duncan, Dennis

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

A playful history of the humble index and its outsized effect on our reading lives. Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and--of course--indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart--and we have been for eight hundred years.

W.W.Norton&Company

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book--it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Duncan uncovers how it has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office, and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and--of course--indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart--and we have been for eight hundred years.

"Learn how to ask relevant questions ; develop logic and reason."--T.p.

Strategies & Games for Improving Critical-Thinking & Questioning Skills: Grades 3-5

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Teacher Created Resources

Since the appearance of Remainder in 2005, Tom McCarthy has emerged as one of the most significant British novelists of the twenty-first century, with two of his first four novels appearing on the Man Booker shortlist. This collection, the first devoted to McCarthy, offers a breadth of angles on the novels Remainder (2005), Men in Space (2007), C (2010), and Satin Island (2015), placing them in their literary and philosophical contexts, from the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century to the speculative realists of the early twenty-first. The essays cover topics ranging from the roles that geometry, architecture, memory, materiality, and posthumanism play in McCarthy's writing; they consider his relation to modernism and to postmodernism; and they examine his artistic output under the guise of the International Necronautical Society.

Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays)

Essays & Correspondence

Gylphi

This collection of meditations draws together articles previously published in the Daily Telegraph and in book form under the titles "Be Still and Know", "Solitude Stillness Serenity" and "Rainbows Through the Rain". It adds many new meditations to provide a devotional that runs through the year, organized according to season and theme. It makes available a significant body of popular spiritual writing to a new audience.

Meditations Through the Year : Saturday Meditations for the 'Daily Telegraph

Daily Telegraph Staff

John Hunt Publishing

This innovative collection of essays shows how linguistic diversity has inspired people across time and cultures to embark on adventurous journeys through the translation of texts. It tells the story of how ideas have travelled via the medium of translation into different languages and cultures, focusing on illustrated examples ranging from Greek papyri through illuminated manuscripts and fine early books to fantasy languages and the search for a universal language. Starting with the concept of Babel itself, which illustrates the early cultural prominence of multilingualism, the book examines a Mediterranean language of four millennia ago called Linear A, which still resists deciphering today. Going on to explore how languages have interacted with each other in different contexts, the book also sheds light on the multilingual transmission of key texts in religion, science, fables and fairy-tales, and epic literature. Lavishly illustrated with a diverse range of material, from papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt to Esperanto handbooks to Asterix cartoons, Babel opens up a world of adventures into translation.  

Babel: Adventures in Translation

Kohl, Katrin

Harrison, Stephen

Reynolds, Matthew

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Duncan, Dennis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Duncan, Dennis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Duncan, Dennis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Oulipo and Modern Thought

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age

Strategies & Games for Improving Critical-Thinking & Questioning Skills: Grades 3-5

Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays)

Meditations Through the Year : Saturday Meditations for the 'Daily Telegraph

Babel: Adventures in Translation