LT910-7-SP-CO:
Oulipian Practice
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
20
24 March 2022
Requisites for this module
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Key module for MA Creative Writing and MA Literature and Creative Writing
Established in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais, the Oulipo (or Workshop of Potential Literature) has made a unique and enduring contribution to world literature, with works like Georges Perec's Life: A User`s Manual and Italo Calvino`s If On a Winter`s Night a Traveller. Today, the group`s impact can be registered in innovative writing practice from poetry and performance, to fiction and film.
This course will explore Oulipian practice across a variety of kinds of writing, drawn from: poetry, performance, the novel, the short story, autobiography, the essay, cartoons, translation, illustration, and nonsense writing.
The aims of the module are:
1. To encourage students to apply Oulipian techniques and methods and approaches applicable to a range of creative writing across different modes and genres.
2. To develop students' critical understanding of a range of key Oulipian texts by a variety of writers both inside and outside Oulipo.
3. To enable students to combine different Oulipian methods in new ways and to create similar methods of their own invention applicable to their own creative writing.
After successful completion of the module, students should be able to:
1. display a detailed knowledge of Oulipian practice across a range of writings and apply a range of Oulipian methods to develop their own writing practice
2. critically evaluate innovative writing practices of Oulipo in published texts and in their own writing
3. use and combine different Oulipian methods and apply these to their own writing
Module Supervisor`s Research into Subject Area:
Philip Terry is a novelist and poet whose work explores Oulipian methods of writing. He is also a translator of Oulipian writing from the French, including work by Georges Perec and Rymond Queneau`s last published book of poems `Elementary Morality`.
Anticipated teaching delivery: Weekly 2-hour workshop.
These will include seminars/workshops, field work, and presentations. Practical writing exercises, both individual and collaborative, carried out in class, will be a key element of teaching and learning.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
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Additional coursework information
The relative lengths of these two components will depend on the nature of your writing, and should be negotiated with your module tutor. Commentaries should address issues such as: process of composition, development and revision, theoretical context, other relevant contexts and self-evaluation of work.
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Prof Philip Terry, email: pterry@essex.ac.uk.
Professor Phil Terry
LiFTS General Office - email liftstt@essex.ac.uk.
Telephone 01206 872626
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No
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Dr Tim Atkins
University of Roehampton
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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