Digital Humanities and the Transformation of Literary Authorship: A Comparative Study of George Orwell’s 1984 and Death of an Author

Abstract

This study examines the evolution of narrative intelligence from human authorship to AI-driven literary production. Situated at the intersection of Digital Humanities and Posthuman Literary Theory, it presents a qualitative comparative analysis of 1984 by George Orwell (1949), Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984), Death of an Author by Aidan Marchine (2023), and 1 the Road by Ross Goodwin (2018). Human-authored novels employ intentional narrative structures to critique surveillance, identity, and technological control, whereas AI-generated texts rely on probabilistic language models that challenge the traditional concepts of creativity and authorship. This study adopts a dual-layered qualitative methodology, integrating thematic analysis with close reading. It explores key themes, including panoptic surveillance, digital identity, technological mediation, and posthuman subjectivity, while comparing narrative coherence, psychological depth, and stylistic complexity in human-authored fiction with the fragmented structures, statistical patterns, and algorithmic textuality of AI-generated narratives. The findings reveal that AI-generated fiction is not merely an automated imitation of human creativity but a collaborative form of literary production that emerges from the interaction between human prompts, computational systems, and reader interpretation. This shift redefines authorship and demonstrates the significance of Digital Humanities in analyzing contemporary literature within a posthuman framework.
Future research may expand this comparative framework by incorporating multilingual AI-generated narratives, cross-cultural literary traditions, reader-response studies, and longitudinal analyses of rapidly evolving generative language models. Further interdisciplinary investigations integrating cognitive literary studies, computational linguistics, ethics of AI, and creative writing practices can provide deeper insights into the evolving relationship between human imagination and machine-generated textuality.