Related: Does computer-generated poetry, stories, etc. fit in any common definition of literature?
And the associated reading challenge proposal that inspired the questions: https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1038/793
The linked proposal is for a reading challenge for The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed, much of which is computer-generated.
My other linked question asks how this fits into common definition of literature. However, I'd like to ask a more specific question here: someone else pointed out that this kind of text really can't be analyzed from an authorial intent perspective because there's no intent behind the text whatever (see, for example, the Chinese Room argument - it obviously makes no sense to try to claim that the computer was trying to communicate something specific). How would advocates of authorial intent theories of meaning respond to this? Do their definitions of literature usually explicitly require some kind of conscious intent on the author's part for something to even be considered literature in the first place? In other words, from their perspective, would they say "that's not really literature" or even "that fundamentally doesn't even have any meaning at all"?
I suppose that a third possible response would be that the method of construction means that, in some sense, the programmer was the real author.
Has any prominent advocate of authorial intent actually analyzed this type of situation?
