The question of memory intrigues us more and more as industrialized societies move further and further away from the written word. In the past the role of memory was integral to literary history, precise mnemonics served as the support systems for erudition, and Mnemosyne was mother of the Muses. The group Oulipo, born in reaction to the Surrealists, proposes, invents, and applies novel literary constraints. Using memory, and best of all conscious memory, as a theoretical starting point, the implications of writing under constraint are analyzed. First, writing under constraint is viewed as a...