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Computer-generated fiction in a literary lineage: Breaking the Hermeneutic contract

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-06-12, 13:25 authored by Leah Henrickson
This article examines the place of computer-generated literary texts within the boundaries of modern literary analysis. Any act of reading engages interpretive faculties; modern readers assume a text to embody human agency. With this assumption, readers assign authorial intention, and hence develop a perceived contract between the author and the reader. Yet computer-generated texts bring this contract into question. Drawing from historical examples of conceptual writing, this article shows how computer-generated texts call into question current conceptions of authorship and what it means to be a reader, but how they nevertheless fit within a longstanding literary lineage.

History

School

  • The Arts, English and Drama

Department

  • English and Drama

Published in

Logos

Volume

29

Issue

2-3

Pages

54–63

Citation

HENRICKSON, L., 2018. Computer-generated fiction in a literary lineage: Breaking the Hermeneutic contract. Logos, 29 (2-3), pp. 54–63.

Publisher

Brill Academic Publishers

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Logos

Publisher statement

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Logos and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1163/18784712-02902007

Acceptance date

2018-05-23

Publication date

2018-11-17

Copyright date

2018

ISSN

0957-9656

Language

  • en