.... J'aimerais pouvoir dire tout ace qu'il est possible un homme de dire, et de toutes les manieres possibles." 2 To highlight the central role of paradox in a more global way, then, is the ultimate homage to Perec's own desire: to capture at once the eternal and the ephemeral, to escape the constraints of time...

...: Peeters, 1995), Jan Baetens focused on the elaboration of rules and structures in contemporary apoetry. In Romans contraintes, Baetens argues that critics tend to over- look the important place of constraints in modern prose writing, despite the success of Oulipo writers such as Georges Perec, Italo...

... is not a literary school, but rather a kind of research group interested in proposing new forms and constraints. In this context, Peter Consenstein's book proposes a welcome new approach, formulating a theory of "literary memory" that provides a unifying framework for understanding the Oulipo's project of writing...

... contraintes. New York: Rodopi, 2005. Pp. 190. In his earlier book L~Ethique de la contrainte (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), Jan Baetens focused on the elaboration of rules and structures in contemporary apoetry. In Romans contraintes, Baetens argues that critics tend to over- look the important place of constraints...

... and quotations in La Vie mode d'emp[oi, which form part of the larger system of constraints used by Georges Perec to write the novel, has received a great deal of critical attention. Critics have also addressed the important role played by paintings and descriptions of paintings in Perec's work.2 I concentrate...

..." structure, but each chapter returned to a few central problems such as the areadability of constraints. Romans contraintes is more diffuse, bringing together a collection of disparate reflections, and emphasizing breadth rather than focusing on a particular genre. The most stimulating sections are those...

... Bertelli and Mireille Ribiere (Paris: Joseph K., 2003) 187. 594 BOOK REVIEWS on the disappearance of, among other things, a protagonist named "Voyl" and the letter "e" from the alphabet. Both of these works reflect Perec's attachment to the kinds of constraints embraced by members of the OuliPo...

... as if with its own voice. ZOLA: COLORIST, ABSTRACTIONIST Zola and Color Practice It is useful, in the first instance, to review some of the key constraints on evaluating color in writing. As soon as we try to move beyond discussions of elementary color symbolism (that of the red sky over Paris in La Curee...

..., in which she manipulates him into saving her, does not establish an alliance of peaceful relations, as does Jose's first encounter with the narrator; rather, their meeting initiates a gift/countergift exchange that forges a bond of indebtedness and constraint. Carmen spends just over a day with Jose to pay...

... is not a literary school, but rather a kind of research group interested in proposing new forms and constraints. In this context, Peter Consenstein's book proposes a welcome new approach, formulating a theory of "literary memory" that provides a unifying framework for understanding the Oulipo's project of writing...

...). IDENTITY, REFLEXIVITY AND SPACE IN PEREC AND GIDE 415 escape the control of both writer and reader.3 I will later explore this notion further by taking into account Giorgio Agamben's theory of the potential as the capacity "not to do." While the notion of constraint in Perec's oulipian texts4 has been...

... constraints" (20)-a formulation we can read as Oulipian (there are schemata and constraints), non-Oulipian (the schemata and constraints I have in mind are those of narrative fiction in general) or perhaps as simply mischievous, Oulipian in another mode (there are no schemata and constraints here but the mere...

... wish it seems to express to have transcended the constraints of historymight be precisely to imagine ways to historicize that desire. How, then, might we understand the situation of eighteenth-century writers and read their texts in a way that takes into account the historicity of writing and of (our...

..., mais quoi, les lois de la conscience peut-etre, de ma conscience. ~~Ne serait-on pas libre?" "A examiner." -Samuel Beckett, Molloy, 15-16,42 W hat choices do we really have in life? Put another way: how does choice operate within determined constraints? And how does life become art? So asks Marcel...

... who, long before her, evaded and negotiated social constraints. This Algerian feminine inspiration is also broached through Islamic figures of female strength. Through Nowhere's title, Djebar establishes a parallel between the narrator's dispossession and that of Fatima,10 the Prophet Mohammad's...

... that this is how consent tends to function; it creates, for instance, the figure of the rabid predator after defenseless children in order to deflect attention away from more “everyday abuse and constraints on sexual choice.” In a similar vein, I have asked whether the presumption that consent was not meaningful...

... collapsing, it turns out. How would the novel survive, Zola famously feared, without the lifelong constraints of unhappy marriage to fuel an adulterous plot twist; why would anyone go to deliciously violent lengths to murder a spouse, if one need now only go to the courthouse to end a marriage? Fortunately...

..., and literary. Alongside outcries over the predicted collapse of family structures, there were also predictions of narrative structures collapsing, it turns out. How would the novel survive, Zola famously feared, without the lifelong constraints of unhappy marriage to fuel an adulterous plot twist; why would...

... by Ross Chambers: A Legacy of Love 15 the constraints that the limits of my own intellect could impose on my playing with it. Quite the contrary, the limits themselves would often become part of the game. Think of a toddler who quickly sets the shiny new toy aside to start playing with the ­packaging...

... an indelible mark on the history of French literature with his varied and virtuosic oeuvre. This celebrated twentieth-century author was a member of the influential OuLiPo group of writers, who found formal constraints liberating. Case in point is Perec’s La Disparition (1969), a three-hundred-page novel...