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A lipogram (from , ''leipográmmatos'', "leaving out a letter") is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting in writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided—usually a common vowel, and frequently ''E'', the most common letter in the English language.〔McArthur, Tom (1992). ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'', p.612. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-214183-X〕 Larousse defines a lipogram as a "literary work in which one compels oneself strictly to exclude one or several letters of the alphabet." 〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.97-98 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 Extended Ancient Greek texts avoiding the letter sigma are the earliest examples of lipograms.〔Motte Jr, Warren F (1986). "Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.100–101 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 Writing a lipogram may be a trivial task when avoiding uncommon letters like ''Z'', ''J'', ''Q'', or ''X'', but it is much more difficult to avoid common letters like ''E'', ''T'' or ''A'', as the author must omit many ordinary words. Grammatically meaningful and smooth-flowing lipograms can be difficult to compose. Identifying lipograms can also be problematic, as there is always the possibility that a given piece of writing in any language may be unintentionally lipogrammatic. For example, Poe's poem ''The Raven'' contains no ''Z'', but there is no evidence that this was intentional. A pangrammatic lipogram is a text that uses every letter of the alphabet except one. For example, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" omits the letter ''S'', which the usual pangram includes by using the word ''jumps''. ==History== The word ''lipogram'' is not always included in dictionaries. This may be due to the authors of lipograms often being dismissed by academia. "Literary history seems deliberately to ignore writing as practice, as work, as play."〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.98 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 Lasus of Hermione is the most ancient author of a lipogram, who lived during the second half of the sixth century BCE. This makes the lipogram, according to Quintus Curtius Rufus, "the most ancient systematic artifice of Western literature." 〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.100 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 Lasus did not like the sigma, and excluded it from one of his poems, entitled ''Ode to the Centaurs,'' of which nothing remains; as well as a ''Hymn to Demeter'', of which the first verse remains:〔 : Δάματρα μέλπω Κόραν τε Κλυμένοι᾽ ἄλοχον : μελιβόαν ὕμνον ἀναγνέων : Αἰολίδ᾽ ἂμ βαρύβρομον ἁρμονίαν This translates to: :I chant of Demeter and Kore, Wife of the famed () :Lifting forth a gentle-voiced hymn :In the deep-toned Aeolian mode.〔Athen., 14.624e-f, and see 10.455c-d〕 The late antiquity Greek poets Nestor of Laranda and Tryphiodorus wrote lipogrammatic adaptations of the Homeric poems: Nestor composed an ''Iliad'', which was followed by Tryphiodorus' ''Odyssey''.〔.〕 Both Nestor's Iliad and Tryphidorous' Odyssey were composed of 24 books (like the original Iliad and Odyssey) each book omitting a subsequent letter of the Greek alphabet. Therefore, the first book omitted alpha, the second beta, and so forth.〔 Twelve centuries after Tryphiodorus wrote his lipogrammatic ''Odyssey'', on Tuesday, May 8, 1711, Addison attacked this work, arguing that "it must have been amusing to see the most elegant word of the language rejected like "a diamond with a flow in it" if it was tainted by the proscribed letter."〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p. 101. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 Addison chose to attack Tryphiodorus' work for unknown reasons, despite the fact that it had been lost previous to Addison's review of the lipogrammatic ''Odyssey''. Piere de Riga, a canon of Sainte-Marie de Reims during the 11th century, translated the Bible, and due to its scriptural obscurities called it ''Aurora''. Each canto of the translation was followed by a resume in Lipogrammic verse; the first canto has no ''A'', the second has no ''B'', and so on. There are two hundred and fifty manuscripts of Piere de Riga’s Bible still preserved.〔Jacques Bens, Claude Berge, and Paul Braffort, ''History of the Lipogram'', page 101, 102.〕 There is a tradition of German and Italian lipograms excluding the letter ''R'' dating from the seventeenth century until modern times. While some authors excluded other letters, it was the exclusion of the ''R'' which ensured the practice of the lipogram continued into modern times. In German especially, the ''R'', while not the most prevalent letter, has a very important grammatical role, as male relatives include an ''R'' (e.g. ''er'', ''der'', ''dieser'', ''jener'', ''welcher'').〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.102 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 For the Italian authors, it seems to be a profound dislike of the letter ''R'' which prompted them to write lipograms excluding this letter (and often only this letter).〔"Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature", p.103 University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803281318〕 There is also a long tradition of ''vocalic lipograms'', in which a vowel (or vowels) is omitted. This tends to be the most difficult form of the lipogram. This practice was developed mainly in Spain by the Portuguese author Alonso de Alcala y Herrera who published an octavo entitled ''Varios efetos de amor, en cinco novelas exemplares, y nuevo artificio para escrivir prosa y versos sin una de las letras vocales''. From Spain, the method moved into France〔See, for example Jacques Arago's (''Curieux voyage autour du monde''(1853) ), omitting ''A''.〕 and England.〔 One of the most remarkable examples of lipogram is Ernest Vincent Wright's novel ''Gadsby'' (1939), which has over 50,000 words but not a single letter ''E''. Wright's self-imposed rule prohibited such common English words as ''the'' and ''he'', plurals ending in ''-es'', past tenses ending in ''-ed'', and even abbreviations like ''Mr.'' (since it is short for ''Mister'') or ''Bob'' (for ''Robert''). Yet the narration flows fairly smoothly, and the book was praised by critics for its literary merits. Wright was motivated to write ''Gadsby'' by an earlier four-stanza lipogrammatic poem of another author. Even earlier, Spanish playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela published five short stories between 1926 and 1927, each one omitting a vowel; the best known are "El Chofer Nuevo" ("The new Driver"), without the letter ''A'', and "''Un marido sin vocación''" ("A Vocationless Husband"), without the ''E''.〔http://perso.wanadoo.es/jardielponcela/documentos/texto1.htm〕 Interest in lipograms was rekindled by Georges Perec's novel ''La Disparition'' (1969) (openly inspired by Wright's ''Gadsby'') and its English translation ''A Void'' by Gilbert Adair.〔 Both works are missing the letter ''E'', which is the most common letter in French as well as in English. A Spanish translation instead omits the letter ''A'', the second most common letter in that language. Perec subsequently wrote ''Les revenentes'' (1972), a novel that uses no vowels except for ''E''. Perec was a member of Oulipo, a group of French authors who adopted a variety of constraints in their work. ''La Disparition'' is, to date, the longest lipogram in existence. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lipogram」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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