Literature in the Era of Distant Writing: A New Paradigm Between the Death of the Author and the Role of the (Open) Reader

This paper explores how Luciano Floridi’s recent concept of “distant writing” fundamentally reconfigures the nature and future of literature in the era of Large Language Models (LLMs). Building on Franco Moretti’s notion of distant reading, Floridi demonstrates how authorship shifts from direct textual production to the design of narrative constraints, transforming the writer into a meta-author. Reframing this shift through Roland Barthes’ idea of the “death of the author” and Umberto Eco’s concepts of the “open work” and the “model reader,” this paper argues that literature now unfolds within a new paradigm: what is here termed distant literature. In this model, the traditional authority of the author dissolves while the role of the reader expands as co-designer and active interpreter of generative, machine-mediated texts. To illustrate these tensions, the paper presents “The Barthes–Eco Simulation” – an AI-generated dialogue that stages an imagined encounter between Barthes and Eco, revealing how distant literature foregrounds co-authorship and interpretive agency. By weaving together theory and experimental practice, the paper calls for a critical rethinking of literature’s production, reception, and ethical horizons in the age of generative AI.