Literary Analysis in the Age of Artificial Intelligence; How AI Affects Storytelling and Authorship

Abstract

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is a landmark in the history of narrative in that it undermines some of the most fundamental principles of storytelling, authorship, and the principles of literary analysis. This paper claims that AI is not just a novel resource that writers can use but a paradigm-altering technology that requires a paradigm shift to literature analysis. It starts with the discussion of the historical development of the authorship concept of a romantic ideal to a post-structuralist concept, and explains why AI reveals the instability of the authorial position inherent to it. Then the paper examines the mechanics of the AI story-telling process and the comparison between human cognitive narrative processes and the pattern-matching and probabilistic text generation of Large Language Models (LLMs). The paper explores such emerging phenomena as hyper-authorship, algorithmic co-creation, and synthetic orality through critical analysis of AI-generated and AI-assisted texts. It proposes a new critical methodology Critical Algorithmic Literary Analysis (CALA) which is a combination of computational analysis, hermeneutics, and a profound questioning of the socio-technical systems within which AI narratives are developed. Lastly, the paper answers the ethical and ontological questions posed by this new literary landscape in the end that the future of storytelling is not in the competition between man and machine, but in a dialectical, complex/compromise, relationship that forces us into redefining the very nature of creative expression and interpretative practice.