Generative literature is poetry or fiction that is automatically generated, often using computers. It is a genre of

electronic literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...

, and also related to generative art. John Clark's Latin Verse Machine (1830–1843) is probably the first example of mechanised generative literature, while

Christopher Strachey Christopher S. Strachey (; 16 November 1916 – 18 May 1975) was a British computer scientist. He was one of the founders of denotational semantics, and a pioneer in programming language design and computer time-sharing.F. J. Corbató, et al., ...

's love letter generator (1952) is the first digital example. With the

large language models A large language model (LLM) is a language model consisting of a neural network with many parameters (typically billions of weights or more), trained on large quantities of unlabelled text using self-supervised learning. LLMs emerged around 2018 an ...

(LLMs) of the 2020s, generative literature is becoming increasingly common.

Definitions

Hannes Bajohr defines generative literature as literature involving "the automatic production of text according to predetermined parameters, usually following a combinatory, sometimes aleatory logic, and it emphasizes the production rather than the reception of the work (unlike, say, hypertext)." In his book

Electronic Literature Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. A work of electronic literature can be defined as "a constr ...

Scott Rettberg connects generative literature to avant-garde literary movements like Dada,

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

and

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

. Bajohr argues that

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

is also an important reference.

Paradigms of generative literature

Bajohr describes two main paradigms of generative literature: the ''sequential paradigm'', where the text generation is "executed as a sequence of rule-steps" and employs linear

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...

, and the ''connectionist paradigm'', which is based on

neural nets Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected units ...

. The latter leads to what Bajohr calls a ''algorithmic empathy:'' "a non-anthropocentric empathy aimed not at the psychological states of the artists but at understanding the process of the work’s material production."

Poetry generation

The first examples of automated generative literature are poetry: John Clark's mechanical Latin Verse Machine (1830–1843) produced lines of hexameter verse in Latin, and

's love letter generator (1952), programmed on the Manchester Mark 1 computer, generated short, satirical love letters. Examples of generative poetry using

artificial neural networks Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected unit ...

include

David Jhave Johnston David Jhave Johnston is a Canadian poet, videographer, and motion graphics artist working chiefly in digital and computational media. This artist's work is often attributed, simply, to the name Jhave. Education and career Jhave completed his ...

ReRites ''ReRites'' (also known as ''RERITES, ReadingRites, Big Data Poetry'') is a literary work of "Human + A.I. poetry" by David Jhave Johnston that used neural network models trained to generate poetry which the author then edited. ReRites won the Rob ...

Narrative generation

Story generators have often followed specific narratological theories of how stories are constructed. An early example is Grimes' Fairy Tales, the "first to take a grammar-based approach and the first to operationalize Propp's famous model." Mike Sharples and Rafael Peréz y Peréz's book ''Story Machines'' gives a detailed history of story generation. ''Storyland'' by Nanette Wylde is an example of generative narrative. Jonathan Baillehache compares ''Storyland'' to Surrealist writing. Baillehache states, "When compared to earlier uses of chance operation in literature, a piece like this one resembles some of the automatic writings produced by

André Breton André Robert Breton (; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') o ...

and

Philippe Soupault Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897 – 12 March 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault ini ...

in their collective work ''The Magnetic Fields''. . . The difference between Nanette Wylde’s ''Storyland'' and Breton and Soupault’s ''Magnetic Fields'' is that the former is produced according to a computational algorithm involving randomizers and user interaction, and the latter by two free-wheeling human subjects."{{Cite journal , last=Baillehache , first=Jonathan , date=2013 , title=Chance Operations and Randomizers in Avant-garde and Electronic Poetry: Tying Media to Language , url=https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/textual/article/view/5049 , journal=Textual Cultures , language=en , volume=8 , issue=1 , pages=38–56 , doi=10.14434/TCv8i1.5049 , issn=1933-7418, doi-access=free

References

New media art Generative artificial intelligence Generative literature Poetry movements