# Creative Transformation in Literary Texts: Modelling Change Across Representational Levels

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28513 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28513/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 30 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.07772/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Creativity Evaluation: A Critical Analysis of Existing Creativity Evaluations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05470/) (2025)
- [Authorship Attribution through Function Word Adjacency Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.4469/) (2014)
- [The Creative Frontier of Generative AI: Managing the Novelty-Usefulness Tradeoff](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03601/) (2023)
- [A Machine Learning Approach for Evaluating Creative Artifacts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.05499/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Creativity is often framed as the production of novelty, yet many cultural works emerge through transformation of earlier artifacts and not through isolated invention. Drawing on theories of imitation by Gabriel Tarde and James Mark Baldwin, this paper models creativity as selective transformation across multiple levels of textual representation. We introduce a multi-level framework that compares literary texts across lexical, semantic, conceptual, structural, and narrative dimensions using directional alignment and control calibrated similarity measures. Applying the model to historically documented literary relationships, we show that different pairs preserve source structure at different representational levels while diverging in others. These transformation profiles provide a quantitative method for characterizing how imitation persists and where creative divergence occurs within literary works.