LIKE A TROPE, ON THE WIRE

                           

 Whatever the virtues of my essay-series HOW CONTEMPT BREEDS UNFAMILIARITY,  it did not succeed in supplying a succinct “summation of my NUM theory,” so here’s a one-essay shot at simplification.

 Almost all Western critics from the 18^th century on have formed their theories against a background of predominantly “realistic” literature, in which it is taken for granted that the world of literature ought to emulate the world one sees outside one’s window, or, failing that, the world one would have seen had one lived at a certain time and place. Only in the 20^th century did some critics, such as Northrop Frye and Leslie Fiedler, attempt to articulate systems that accounted for the appeal of what is usually called “fantastic literature.” Even so, these authors still focused mostly on authors whose metaphenomenal visions had proved popular for centuries: Swift, Milton, Poe, et al.

My amateur “poetics” takes metaphenomenal literature as the starting-point and views all the developments of realistic literature as reactions against the literary formulas—tropes, as many call them-- of myth and folklore.

 

As it happens, the earliest literary critic—or at least, the earliest whose works have survived to the present day—lived in an era (384-322 B.C.) in which most major literary works took place in metaphenomenal worlds, whether they recapitulated the major mythic narratives associated with the Greek pantheon, as seen in Homer’s two epics, or simply used relatively minor fantasy-tropes, like the ghost that appears in Aeschylus’s THE PERSIANS. Because Aristotle’s literary world was full of gods, curses and oracles, his POETICS, the first extant statement of artistic principles, does not address in depth the subject of phenomenality; of how a given literary work portrays the nature of the phenomena available in its world. The POETICS makes several statements that are relevant to the subject of phenomenality, such as when the philosopher opines that comedy tends to be more down-to-earth than tragedy. But the closest Aristotle comes to an overall statement on what phenomena a work can portray is his elaboration upon the concept of mimesis (“imitation.”) For Aristotle, what he calls “poetry” is the “imitation of an action” of which the poet has conceived, and the philosopher breaks down three categories of narrative action of which the poet can conceive: “things as they are or were,” “things as they are said to be” (that is, things whose veracity the poet cannot vouch for), and “things as they ought to be.” The last category may have taken in for the rare narratives that paralleled what we now call science fiction, such as Aristophanes’ THE BIRDS (414 BC), which depicts the titular avians creating the imaginary domain of Cloud Cuckoo Land. But Aristotle does not offer more than one or two examples of each of these categories, for he did not live in a world whose literature privileged the naturalistic. There was no need to justify the metaphenomenal worlds of THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY, since everyone accepted them as genuine art.

 

If there is a “fatal flaw” in Aristotle’s categories, it would be his failure to point out that even the author’s depiction of “things as they are” were not windows upon reality as such; that they were, as much as depictions of gods and ghosts, literary tropes; formulas that were meant to evoke certain responses in their audiences. For instance, a scene in THE ODYSSEY depicts a servant’s recognition of the disguised Odysseus thanks to an unhealed scar on the hero’s leg. Even though the epic is full of gods and monsters, this scene is predicated on a naturalistic detail that convinces because everyone in the audience is familiar with the fact that wounds don’t always heal properly. Nevertheless, the scene is not “reality,” but an “imitation of reality.” It is not any less a construct than, say, a scene in THE ILIAD wherein Zeus makes the very un-human statement that, if he so desired, he could absorb all of his fractious fellow gods into himself as a show of his omnipotence.

 

Aristotle almost certainly knew that even realistic tropes were still products of human artifice, but he does not explicitly say so. There is no over-arcing statement to parallel that of the modern philosopher Suzanne Langer, who labeled all the productions of art as being “gestural,” i.e., that they gestured toward aspects of human existence without actually being coterminous with those aspects. The rediscovery of Aristotle’s works during the European Renaissance resulted in a misinterpretation of his concept of mimesis, so as to emphasize only “things as they are or were.” Of course, it may be that the Renaissance critics merely chose to emphasize the parts of Aristotle that validated their own culture, since during that period literature became increasingly naturalistic.

 

The predominant naturalism of 18^th-century works like MOLL FLANDERS and TOM JONES as I said, a reaction against the older forms of European romance and religious rhetoric, which had served roughly the same cultural purpose in the European countries that Greek polytheism had served in Greece. That century saw a limited counter-reaction against naturalism in a short-lived vogue for “Arabian Nights” fantasies and the more protracted European fascination with Gothic horrors. In the 19^th century the latter form of metaphenomenal literature also spread to the United States of America and affected the oeuvres of Poe and of Hawthorne. But the Gothics and all the subcategories of metaphenomenal fiction—eventually given the rubrics of “fantasy, horror and science fiction” in the ensuing century—were not regarded as being on the same quality-level as naturalistic literature. Not until the latter half of the 20th century did naturalism lose some of its hold on the Western psyche, resulting in the proliferation of so-called “speculative fiction,” much of which was given more literary cachet than the old “science fiction and fantasy.”

 

In my discussion of Aristotle I mentioned that Classic Greek literature could embrace both “naturalistic tropes,” which were often with the limitations of human fallibility and mortality,” and with “marvelous tropes” about gods and ghosts, describing imagined states of existence beyond the realm of human limitations. Gothic fiction was instrumental, however, in promulgating the interstitial category of “uncanny tropes.” Such tropes had existed even in mankind’s prehistory, and in my essay UNCANNY GENESIS I cited some examples of uncanny tropes from archaic story-cycles, such as the extra-Biblical “Bel and the Dragon” and “the Six Labors of Theseus.” But there’s no doubt that Gothic practitioners like Ann Radcliffe had a much more sustained effect in elaborating stories in which supernatural occurrences were “explained rationally.” In truth, though, the “rationality” of uncanny stories like THE ITALIAN and THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO is compromised from the start by even allowing for the possibility of the supernatural, in contrast, say, to Jane Austen’s Gothic spoof NORTHANGER ABBEY, in which the existence of the supernatural is not even slightly validated.

 

The domain of “the naturalistic” emphasizes conformity with whatever idea of “natural law” an audience may expouse, whereas the domain of “the marvelous” conforms to whatever concepts are seen as transcending natural law, be it through Christian miracles or futuristic inventions. The domain of “the uncanny,” though, endeavors to perform a high-wire balancing act between these two literary phenomenalities. It might be argued that some forms of “the uncanny” sway toward the domain of naturalism, as when the story’s hero unmasks a marauding ghost as sinister Uncle Eben. But other forms sway closer to the domain of the marvelous. Nothing in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original TARZAN story literally transcends natural law, however much one questions the probability of the hero’s advancement to his status of “lord of the jungle.” Tarzan is supposedly no stronger than a human male can be at the peak of development. But his immense strength SEEMS to make him a “superman,” as does his rapport with jungle-beasts like apes and elephants. And so, even though the author is working with a set of uncanny tropes akin to those of Ann Radcliffe, emphasizing *semblance* rather than *actuality,* Tarzan’s origins do not reduce him in stature in the way that arguably Uncle Eben is reduced by the revelation of his ghostly imposture.

 

All of these sets of phenomenality-tropes reflect the desire of human audiences to see stories that reflect either direct physical experience or indirect mental experience. It may be argued that the exigencies of physical existence signify that humans can never be “free” in the sense of being independent of those exigencies. However, literary work allows audiences to think and feel what it would like to enjoy such freedom, whether that sense of freedom is ultimately validated or frustrated. The freedom to think in terms outside those of immediate experience have arguably made it possible for humans to concoct real handheld communication devices to match those of the fictional STAR TREK. But even if no such innovations came about in response to fictional inspirations, literature is at its best when it offers its audiences the mimesis of all possible worlds.

HOW CONTEMPT BREEDS UNFAMILIARITY PT. 4

 I ended the previous essay in the series on this observation:

From one viewpoint, if the prehistoric myth-maker was trying to counter the unfamiliarity of the physical world with images of the familiar (like making the sun into a godly charioteer), the authors of metaphenomenal fiction were challenged by the familiarity of science's reading of the physical world into generating new images of the unfamiliar.

By "new" I meant images that were not wholly rooted in traditional mythico-religious concepts of unfamiliar presences or activities. Given my Jungian outlook, I don't believe that any such images are ever completely novel. The renascent dinosaurs of THE LOST WORLD are functionally identical with the dragons of knightly romance, even though each carries its own specific mystique. But because of the influence of science-based naturalism in the 18th and 19th centuries, both dinosaurs and dragons had to be justified as never before. So even a magical dragon has to explained as having originated in some special locale, like Oz, Middle Earth, or some period of Earth-history not yet governed by science, like Howard's Hyboria.

In fact, all marvelous things or entities, being a contradiction of naturalistic law, are implicitly separated from the naturalistic order by some *estrangement* from either the laws of time, space, or both. This deduction underscores the one of the flaws in Rudolf Otto's system. In the quote I cited in Part 1 of this series, Otto speaks of "the uncanny" as "a thing of which no one can say what it is or whence it comes." This raises the question as to what if any term the Lutheran Otto would apply to such Biblical marvels as the Ark of the Covenant or the burning bush. 

With the literary forms of uncanny phenomena, there's much more of an attempt to conform to the rules of naturalistic law. To my knowledge the term "uncanny"-- which debuted in the 18th century-- doesn't take on any literary significance until it appears in the works of Otto, Ernst Jentsch, and Sigmund Freud. None of them focus on the exact same interpretation of the world, but it can be argued that they all have in common is what Jentsch calls "psychical uncertainties." 

The Gothic works of Ann Radcliffe, most of which appeared at the end of the 18th century, may or may not ever use "uncanny," but they became famous for setting up supposed supernatural occurrence, only to explain it away with some contrivance. What is often overlooked, though, is that the feeling of the "uncanny uncertainty" is not necessarily dispelled by the revelation of the contrivance. Indeed, the contrivance itself, while not usually extravagant enough to contravene laws of time or space, may be sufficiently imaginative that it *seems* to depart from the naturalistic world. In Sherlock Holmes' world, no real demon-hounds can exist. Yet how realistic is a world in which murderers plot to kill their victims with trained dogs covered in phosphorescent paint?

In order to create strangeness of either phenomenality, the author must take a temporary holiday from verisimilitude, and draw upon tropes that exist not in the real world, or in our perceptions of it, but exist purely within the corpus of literature. Such tropes are fiction's conduits to the unfamiliar-- though, after a time, they too can become overly familiar, and can only be rejuvenated by seeking to put new wine in old bottles.

ANCESTORS OF FEAR AND DREAD

C.S. Lewis's analysis from AN EXPERIMENT IN CRITICISM remains my touchstone for the distinction between fear and dread:

Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told ‘There is a ghost in the next room’, and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost.

Lewis formulated this opposition by drawing on Rudolf Otto's 1917 THE IDEA OF THE HOLY. However, a much earlier distinction appeared in a 1826 analysis by Gothicist Ann Radcliffe, where she distinguished between "terror" and "horror." This analysis, later given the title "On the Supernatural in Poetry" by an editor, isn't particularly well-organized. In essence, Radcliffe-- whose Gothic novels depended on suggestion rather than explicit gore and gruesomeness-- has her principal character argue that "terror" is a much subtler and finer emotion than "horror," which is all about the explicitness. Here's her most definite statement on the difference:

Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.

This doesn't really clarify the matter all that much, but a later section makes clear that Radcliffe equates the sublimity of terror with that of the merely suggested, the merely imagined. When an interlocutor asks the speaker what he thinks about Milton's line, "On his brow sat horror plumed," the speaker essentially co-opts MIlton's use of the word "horror" for the speaker's (and Radcliffe's) idea of "terror:"

As an image, it certainly is sublime; it fills the mind with an idea of power, but it does not follow that Milton intended to declare the feeling of horror to be sublime; and after all, his image imparts more of terror than of horror; for it is not distinctly pictured forth, but is seen in glimpses through obscuring shades, the great outlines only appearing, which excite the imagination to complete the rest; he only says, ‘sat horror plumed ;' you will observe, that the look of horror and the other characteristics are left to the imagination of the reader; and according to the strength of that, he will feel Milton's image to be either sublime or otherwise. 

According to this site, Radcliffe was not a fan of explicit gore, and wrote her book THE ITALIAN (which I have not read) as a pointed response to the excesses of Matthew Lewis's 1796 Gothic novel THE MONK. I have read the Lewis book, and I can confirm that it does not hold back in "distinctly picturing forth" its ghastlier scenes).

If there are any significant parallels between the formulations of Ann Radcliffe and of C.S. Lewis (by way of Otto), it would seem to be the mutual attempt to define the nature of fear based in purely physical causes. Lewis' tiger can only inspire fear because there's no deeper concept to be understood about it, save that it's an animal capable of killing a human being. This is only a partial parallel to Radcliffe's use of "horror," which "contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates" both the soul and the faculties. But her contrast to "terror," like Lewis' contrast to the "uncanny" feeling of seeing a "ghost," is pretty clearly based upon the familiar body/mind duality, which poet Octavio Paz more aptly rendered into a duality between "body" and "non-body" (or as I once called them, "corporeal" and "non-corporeal.")

To further complicate the matter, although Lewis is to some extent addressing the question of different phenomenal presences in different situations, Radcliffe apparently has no interest at all in aligning either "terror" or "horror" with any type of phenomena. Though she doesn't mention THE MONK in the above essay, it's plain that she would class it as a work of "horror" simply because it "distinctly pictures forth" all of the unseemly situations it includes-- ranging from the monk Ambrosio's (naturalistic) incestuous union with his own sister, to his (marvelous) doom at the hands of a demon, who flings Ambrosio's body from a great height and allows the monk to perish in agony. If anything, Radcliffe's distinction of "distinct" and "indistinct" is closer to my distinction between "clean" and "dirty violence" in this essay:

I said in an earlier essay that I would address the differing "intensities" of violence in fiction, by which I meant what I called "clean violence" vs. "dirty violence." These are NOT meant to be covalent with my versions of Twitchell's preposterous violence and its unnamed opposite. I refer to the "intensities" of clean and dirty because they are determined purely by how intensely the work does or does not present scenes of violence. As I see it preposterous violence and its opposite are not determined by intensity of effect but by narrative function.

Again, the parallel is still not exact. Still, just as the proponent of "suggestive terror" does not want to "freeze the soul/faculties" of the reader by bringing in gross effects, the proponent of "clean violence"-- my principal example being the 1977 STAR WARS-- is also seeking to avoid grossing out the audience, albeit for a very different aesthetic purpose.

Now, my own definition of "dread" moves away from Lewis's example of a "ghost:" to anything covered by my Ten Tropes, which occur in both naturalistic and uncanny forms-- the first forms inspiring only "fear," while the second may inspire fear but more importantly inspires "dread" as well. The latter comes about because even though both forms obey the laws of causal coherence, the uncanny forms violate the law of intelligibility. In the interest of further defining the process through which intelligibility is violated, I'll devote the upcoming essay JUDGING DREAD PART 2.