Computer-Generated Fiction in a Literary Lineage

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 fiction calls into question current conceptions of authorship and what it means to be a reader, but it nevertheless fits within a longstanding literary lineage.