Abstract
In post-Mao China, personal computers have spread and evolved rapidly, giving rise to a new material and media condition for Chinese literary creation. Rather than treating emerging computer technologies as digital carriers of literary texts or alternatives to print, this dissertation foregrounds them as mechanical writing instruments newly incorporated into Chinese writers’ creative processes. It investigates four exemplary ways that Chinese writers, both within and outside the literary establishment, have repurposed the computer for literary creation: as a word processor, an intelligent and generative machine, a self-publishing interface, and a tool for source-material aggregation. Analyzing representative computer-based literary works alongside the technical specificities of input systems, writing software, and online platforms, I reveal how computer technologies alter writers’ creative practices and render their labor into technologically mediated information processing. This reconfiguration of writerly labor further leads to an epistemic recalibration of notions such as authorial agency, creative subjectivity, and cultural authority, thereby posing challenges for the literary establishment. By situating the constant recoding of creative labor within the intertwined contexts of market reform, media diversification, state-led technological modernization, and globalization, this dissertation demonstrates that Chinese writers do not passively adapt to digitization. Instead, their computer-based creations critically present the promises, limits, and sociocultural consequences of national and global technological change. This study transcends preoccupations with socioeconomic influences on literature and rewrites post-Mao literary history through the lens of technological transformation. It also contributes to theories of digital creativity by offering an account of the complex negotiation among language, computation, and human creators beyond Euro-American and alphabetic contexts.
Committee Chair
Lingchei Chen Chen
Committee Members
Jianqing Chen; Jiayi Chen; Michel Hockx; Uluğ Kuzuoğlu
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Chinese Language & Literature
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
8-12-2026
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/zvcf-3d17
Recommended Citation
Feng, Zihan, "Creativity Recoded: Computer Technologies and Chinese Literary Writing in the Digital Age (1980s-2010s)" (2026). Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations. 3861.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/zvcf-3d17