Electronic Literature, Chapter 2: Combinatory Poetics

This research collection includes references from the second chapter of Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg (Polity, 2018) on Combinatory Poetics. Computer programs access and present data, whether internal to the program and provided by external sources and user input, and then through algorithmic processes, modify or substitute the data presented by the system. It is in this procedural substitution of data, and of language, that computation is most concretely connected to combinatory poetics in experimental writing traditions such as Dada, Surrealism, and Oulipo. This chapter of Electronic Literature considers how elements of chance and procedurality served as the foundation for combinatory and generative art and literature. Combinatory poetics emerged in twentieth-century avant-garde movements, further developed in poetry generators in the early history of computing and remains today an essential mode of practice in electronic literature.