SAGE: A Hierarchical Framework for Evaluating Interpretive Literary Quality in Narratives

Abstract:Assessing the literary quality of narratives requires evaluating interpretive dimensions (cultural representation, emotional depth, and philosophical engagement) that existing NLG metrics cannot measure. We introduce SAGE, a six-layer evaluation framework that separates rule-based assessment of observable textual properties from LLM-based evaluation of interpretive qualities drawn from cultural theory, affect theory, and existentialist philosophy. Each interpretive layer is assessed through multi-round iterative LLM evaluation with independent cross-validation, achieving measurement-grade reliability (98.8% convergence, >94% inter-rater agreement) stable across evaluator models. Validated on 600 evaluations across 100 short stories, our central finding is a systematic capability boundary: emotional-psychological representation approaches human levels, while cultural critique and philosophical depth exhibit approximately double the gap. LLM-generated narratives score below even commercial genre fiction on all three layers. We interpret this as a boundary between pattern-reproducible literary capacities learnable from training corpora and stance-requiring ones demanding cultural positioning and philosophical engagement that pattern matching alone cannot provide.

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2609.06611 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2609.06611v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.06611 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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