https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.028
Lexical and Register Configurations of Reflective Meaning in AI-Generated and Romantic Poetry
RITIKA BANERJEE
Assistant Professor of English
AIMS Institutes, Bangalore
Abstract: The increasing presence of AI-generated literary texts has prompted renewed critical attention to questions of meaning, authorship and literary creativity within contemporary literary studies. This paper investigates reflective meaning, defined as meaning that arises indirectly through abstraction, associative lexical patterns and a contemplative register, in AI-generated poetry compared to human authored Romantic verse. Using William Wordsworth’s Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey as a representative romantic poem, the study conducts a comparative lexical and register-based analysis of this poem alongside an AI-generated poetic text crafted to emulate Romantic stylistic features. Employing Voyant tools, the analysis examines patterns of abstract and nature-related vocabulary, lexical recurrence and register stability to explore how reflective language is linguistically configured across the two texts. Rather than considering computational output as determinative of literary meaning, the study views lexical and register tendencies as indicators that support and inform interpretive analysis. By foregrounding how reflective discourse is shaped through linguistic choices rather than authorial intention, the paper demonstrates how digital humanities methodologies can be productively integrated with literary-critical inquiry without reducing interpretation to mere quantitative measurement. The study contributes to ongoing debates in digital humanities and posthuman literary studies by elucidating the capacities and limitations of AI-generated poetic language in relation to reflective meaning. At the same time, it underscores the methodological limits of computational tools in capturing literary depth and interpretive complexity.
Keywords: Reflective Meaning, Lexical Analysis, Register Analysis, AI-Generated Poetry, Romantic Poetry, Digital Humanities
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