Towards Supporting Literary Studies Using Virtual Reality and Generative Artificial Intelligence

Literary studies critically examine fictional texts, exploring their structures, themes, stylistic features, and cultural-historical contexts. A central challenge in this field lies in bridging textual analysis with the spatial and sensory dimensions of settings described or implied in texts. Traditional methodologies often require scholars to mentally reconstruct these environments, leading to incomplete or inconsistent interpretations. Readers may be biased by their personal context or experiences, or may lack detailed knowledge of the relevant historical facts. This paper argues for the integration of virtual reality and generative artificial intelligence as supporting instruments to enhance literary research. The former enables immersive, spatially accurate reconstructions of historical environments, while the latter provides tools such as text-to-image and text-to-3D generation which let us dynamically render visual elements quoted in literary texts. Together, these technologies have the potential to significantly enhance traditional literature analysis methodologies, enabling novel approaches for contextualizing and analyzing literature in its spatial and cultural milieu.