La contrainte, les sons et les signes visibles

The Oulipo has privileged visible signs over sounds. Three factors might explain this subordination: (I) the relative difficulty of manipulating phonemes when writing; (2) the relative difficulty of perceiving a phonemic constraint when reading;(3) a fundamental obstacle indicated by Jacques Roubaud, for whom «literary constraints absolutely cannot bear on "invisible" givens like phonemes». Practical and theoretical reasons for this surprising prohibition can be found, but they apply equally to rhyme, which the Oulipo has not neglected. This is one of the contradictions that have never prevented the Oulipo from working. Francois Le Lionnais did not share Roubaud's mistrust of phonemes, and his «anti phonemes» opened a path- which, as yet, has been little travelled -to other constraints governing the sound shape of a text The BIG TABLE imagined by Le Lionnais in his notes for a third manifesto has not seen the light, perhaps because it would have required theoretical debates contrary to the group's practical spirit. Nevertheless, the existing and imaginable tables sketch out a vast «research program»,of which the Oulipo is a principle instigator rather than the sole proprietor.