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{{Short description|French poet, writer and mathematician (1932–2024)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2021}}
{{Infobox person
| name        = Jacques Roubaud
| image       = Jacques Roubaud-Salon du Livre 2010 (1).jpg
| caption     = Roubaud at the Paris book fair
| birth_date  = {{birth date|1932|12|05|df=yes}}
| birth_place = [[Caluire-et-Cuire]], [[Rhône (department)|Rhône]], [[French Third Republic|France]]
| death_date  = {{death date and age|2024|12|05|1932|12|05|df=yes}}
| death_place = [[Paris]], France
| education   = [[University of Paris]]
| occupation  = Poet<br>Writer<br>Mathematician
}}
{{French literature sidebar}}
'''Jacques Roubaud''' ({{IPA|fr|ʁubo|lang}}; 5 December 1932 – 5 December 2024) was a French poet, writer, and mathematician.

==Life and career==
Jacques Roubaud taught mathematics at [[Paris Nanterre University|University of Paris X Nanterre]] and poetry at [[School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences|EHESS]]. A member of the [[Oulipo]] group, he has published poetry, plays, novels, and translated English poetry and books into [[French language|French]], such as [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[The Hunting of the Snark]]''. French poet and novelist [[Raymond Queneau]] had Roubaud's first book, a collection of mathematically structured sonnets, published by [[Éditions Gallimard]], and then invited Roubaud to join the Oulipo as the organization's first new member outside the founders.<ref name=Durand>Durand, Marcella. [http://bombsite.com/issues/108/articles/3304 "Jacques Roubaud"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110814070018/http://bombsite.com/issues/108/articles/3304 |date=14 August 2011 }}. ''[[BOMB Magazine]]''. Summer 2009. Retrieved 26 July 2011.</ref>

Roubaud's fiction often suppresses the rigorous constraints of the Oulipo (while mentioning their suppression, thereby indicating that such constraints are indeed present), yet takes the Oulipian self-consciousness of the writing act to an extreme. This simultaneity both appears playfully, in his Hortense novels (''Our Beautiful Heroine'', ''Hortense Is Abducted'' and ''Hortense in Exile''), and with gravity and reflection in ''The Great Fire of London'', considered the pinnacle of his prose. ''The Great Fire of London'' (1989), ''The Loop'' (1993), and ''Mathematics'' (2012) are the first three volumes of a long, experimental, autobiographical work known as "the project" (or "the minimal project"), and the only volumes of "the project", at present, to have been translated into English. Seven volumes of "the project" have been completed and published in French. To compose ''The Loop'', Roubaud began with a childhood memory of a snowy night in [[Carcassonne]] and then wrote nightly, without returning to correct his writing from previous nights. Roubaud's goals in writing ''The Loop'' were to discover "My ''own'' memory, how does it work?" and to "destroy" his memories through writing them down.<ref name=Durand/>

Roubaud participated in readings and lectures at the European Graduate School (2007), the Salon du Livre de Paris (2008), and the "Dire Poesia" series at Palazzo Leoni Montanari in Venice (2011).<ref name="giornale">{{cite web | url=http://www.ilgiornaledivicenza.it/stories/Cultura_e_Spettacoli/241521__poesia_e_matematica_parenti_strette/ | title=Poesia e matematica, "parenti" strette | publisher=Il Giornale di Vicenza | date=6 April 2011 | access-date=6 April 2011 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724083632/http://www.ilgiornaledivicenza.it/stories/Cultura_e_Spettacoli/241521__poesia_e_matematica_parenti_strette/ | archive-date=24 July 2011 }}</ref><ref name="vincenza">{{cite web | url=http://www.comune.vicenza.it/albo/notizie.php/65219 | title=A Dire Poesia Jacques Roubaud e Piergiorgio Odifreddi: magico connubio tra matematica e poesia | publisher=Comune di Vicenza | date=5 April 2011 | access-date=6 April 2011 | archive-date=14 May 2011 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514100147/http://www.comune.vicenza.it/albo/notizie.php/65219 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

In 1980, he married [[Alix Cléo Roubaud]]; she died three years later.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bnf.fr/documents/dp_alix_cleo_roubaud.pdf |title=Quinze minutes la nuit au rythme de la respiration |date=4 April 2023 |publisher=Bibliothèque nationale de France |language=fr}}</ref> Jacques Roubaud died on 5 December 2024, his 92nd birthday.<ref name="g212">{{cite web | title=Jacques Roubaud, poète et mathématicien des mots, est mort | website=Le Monde.fr | date=5 December 2024 | url=https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2024/12/05/jacques-roubaud-poete-et-mathematicien-des-mots-est-mort_6431764_3382.html | language=fr | access-date=5 December 2024}}</ref>

==Selected bibliography==
*''La Belle Hortense'' (1985). ''Our Beautiful Heroine'', trans. David Kornacker (Overlook Press, 1987).
*''Quelque chose noir'' (1986). ''Some Thing Black'', trans. [[Rosmarie Waldrop]]. Photographs by Alix Cléo Roubaud ([[Dalkey Archive Press]], 1990).
*''L'Enlèvement d'Hortense'' (1987). ''Hortense Is Abducted'', trans. Dominic Di Bernardi (Dalkey Archive Press, 1989).
*''Échanges de la lumière'' (1990). ''Exchanges on Light'', trans. Eleni Sikélianòs (La Presse, 2009).
*''Le Grand Incendie de Londres'' (Branch 1 of the Project) (1989). ''The Great Fire of London'', trans. Dominic Di Bernardi (Dalkey Archive Press, 1991).
*''La Princesse Hoppy ou Le Conte du Labrador'' (1990). ''The Princess Hoppy, or The Tale of Labrador'', trans. Bernard Hœpffner (Dalkey Archive Press, 1993).
*''L'Exil d'Hortense'' (1990). ''Hortense in Exile'', trans. Dominic Di Bernardi (Dalkey Archive Press, 1992).
*''La Pluralité des mondes de Lewis'' (1991). ''The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis'', trans. Rosmarie Waldrop (Dalkey Archive Press, 1995).
*''La Boucle'' (Branch 2 of the Project) (1993). ''The Loop'', trans. Jeff Fort (Dalkey Archive Press, 2009).
*''Poésie, etcetera : ménage'' (1995). ''Poetry, etcetera: Cleaning House'', trans. Guy Bennett ([[Green Integer]], 2006).
*''Mathématique'' (Branch 3, Part 1, of the Project) (1997). ''Mathematics'', trans. Ian Monk (Dalkey Archive Press, 2012).
*''La forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas, que le cœur des humains'' (1999). ''The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, than the Human Heart: 150 Poems, 1991–1998'', trans. [[Rosmarie Waldrop]] and [[Keith Waldrop]] (Dalkey Archive Press, 2006).
*''Poésie'' (Branch 4 of the Project) (2000).
*''La Bibliothèque de Warburg'' (Branch 5 of the Project) (2002)
*''Impératif catégorique'' (Branch 3, Part 2, of the Project) (2008)
*''La Dissolution'' (Branch 6 (Final) of the Project) (2008)

== Awards and honors ==
* 1986: Prix France Culture, for ''Quelque chose noir''
* 1990: Grand prix national de la poésie du ministère de la Culture, for his body of work
* 1999: [[America Award in Literature]]
* 2008: [[Grand prix de littérature Paul-Morand]], for his body of work

==References==
<references/>

==Further reading==
* Poucel, Jean-Jacques. ''Jacques Roubaud and the Invention of Memory''. North Carolina Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 
* Puff, Jean-François. "Mémoire de la mémoire. Jacques Roubaud et la lyrique médiévale". Paris : Editions Classiques Garnier, coll. "Etudes de littérature des XXe et XXIe siècles", 2009.
*  Reig, Christophe. ''Mimer, Miner, Rimer : le cycle romanesque de Jacques Roubaud (La Belle Hortense, L'Enlèvement d'Hortense, L'Exil d'Hortense)'' – préface de Bernard Magné, New-York/Amsterdam, Rodopi, coll. " Faux-Titre" n°275, 2006. ({{ISBN|90-420-1978-6}})

==External links==
* {{IMDb name| 6389897}}
* {{discogs artist|Jacques Roubaud}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110930203005/http://auteurs.contemporain.info/jacques-roubaud/ Documentation critique sur J. Roubaud / commented bibliography about Jacques Roubaud]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20110717171536/http://uprightdown.com/blog/?p=118 Jacques Roubaud reading an English translation of one of his poems]

{{America Award in Literature}}
{{Portal bar|France|Novels|Poetry}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roubaud, Jacques}}
[[Category:1932 births]]
[[Category:2024 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Caluire-et-Cuire]]
[[Category:Oulipo members]]
[[Category:20th-century French poets]]
[[Category:20th-century French mathematicians]]
[[Category:20th-century French male poets]]
[[Category:20th-century French novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century French novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century French poets]]
[[Category:21st-century French mathematicians]]
[[Category:Writers from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes]]
[[Category:University of Rennes alumni]]
[[Category:Academic staff of European Graduate School]]
[[Category:Prix Fénéon winners]]
[[Category:Prix France Culture winners]]
[[Category:21st-century French male poets]]
[[Category:20th-century French male novelists]]
[[Category:21st-century French male novelists]]