CORRELATING COGITATIONS

I formulated the literary "word pair" of the ontocosm and the epicosm back in this May essay, and so far it's lasted. I have overturned a few neologisms in the space of a few days, while other formulations have lasted a few years before I abandoned them. So I may or may not keep these two terms in the distant future. However, for now I'm moved to correlate various past dichotomous cogitations under the aegis of each category, if only to keep them all straight in my head.

THE ONTOCOSM of a literary work includes:

All LATERAL meaning, relating to both the KINETIC and DRAMATIC elements of a narrative. These are the elements that tell the reader, "WHAT THINGS HAPPEN."

All FUNCTIONALITY, which appeals to the reader's need for a fictional analogue to real PERCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE.  

All PRE-EPISTEMIC ways of knowing, which are known through the process of "knowledge-by-acquaintance."

All modalities of THE DYNAMIC-SUBLIME, also synonymous with MIGHT.

THE EPICOSM of a literary work includes:

All VERTICAL meaning, relating to both the MYTHOPOEIC and DIDACTIC elements of a narrative. These are the elements that tell the reader, "HOW THINGS HAPPEN."

All SUPER-FUNCTIONALITY, which appeals to the reader's need for a fictional analogue to real CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE. 

All EPISTEMIC ways of knowing, which are known through the process of "knowledge-about."

All modalities of THE COMBINATORY-SUBLIME, also synonymous with MYTH.

 

I may develop some or none of these correlations in future. But for the time being, I'll content myself with noting the essays in which each paired cogitation appeared.

I first mentioned "lateral meaning" in RETHINKING THE UNDERTHOUGHT, which contains one of those word pairs I abandoned ("underthought and overthought"). And later I perfected the application of both lateral and vertical meaning in THE LATERAL AND VERTICAL MEANINGS OF LIFE.    

The duality of "what things happen" and "how things happen" is discussed in WHAT VS. HOW.

"Functionality" and "super-functionality" are first discussed in the 2014 essay A QUICK ASIDE ON FUNCTIONALITY.

Perceptual knowledge and conceptual knowledge appear in the works of both Arthur Schopenhauer and William James.   

Assorted essays on William James discuss the Two Forms of Knowledge, while Alfred North Whitehead is my source of the terms "epistemic" and "pre-epistemic."

The terms "might and myth," a slight play on the standard phrase "might and main," appears in MIGHT AND MYTH. The somewhat more involved cogitations concerning the "dynamicity mode" and the "combinatory mode" of sublimity are explored in the series TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I, beginning here. 

MIGHT AND MYTH

 In addition to the subjects of the previous essay, my cross-comparison of three influential intellectuals here stimulated an interesting return to a subject I've not addressed much lately: that of sublimity.

A quick recap: when I first began writing about the various literary and philosophical conceptions of sublimity, I was probably overly influenced by Kant's concept of the "dynamic-sublime" as expressed in THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. I wrote quite a bit on the subject as to whether different forms of "might" were exclusively responsible for the fictional manifestations of sublimity, with this 2012 essay as a representative example.

In 2013, though, I reflected upon Kant's other manifestation of the sublime, which he termed "the mathematical-sublime." This conception had no great relevance to the fictional worlds with which I was concerned, but I realized that other scholars ranging from Burke to Tolkien had often spoken of perceiving the sublime through a combination of images and elements. From that insight, I formulated the notion that within a literary matrix there existed two forms of the sublime: the "dynamic-sublime" and "the combinatory-sublime," and I set this observation forth in the TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I series.

Now, my conception of the four potentialities were not specifically focused on any manifestation of the sublime. However, as a result of refining my definition of the potentialities in this essay, I realized that each of Jung's "perceiving functions" had a rough equivalence to the two forms of the sublime that I deduced from Kant.

In Jung's arrangement, the "perceiving functions" of sensation and intuition furnish a given subject with raw data about experience, and the two "judging functions" evolve in order to guide the subject's assessments of the data. I've specified in PARALLEL PATHS that Jung may made his "perceiving functions" a bit too passive in nature in contrast to the more active role that "prehensions" serve in the system of Whitehead. Rather than seeing the judging functions as having a superior role over the perceiving functions, I like better the idea that they are "co-definitional" as the term is used by Stuart Kaufman.

All that said, there's some justification for thinking of the mental products of the sensation and intuition functions as being a sort of prima materia from which a distinct secunda materia arises. My newest refinement of the conceptual quanta present in each of the four potentialities supports this reading. The sensation-responses of a subject to "energy," both his own and that of other entities, give rise to emotional evaluations of himself and those entities, while intuition-based responses that build mythic correlations regarding oneself and other entities are inevitably subjected to the rigor of ordered cogitation. 

Further, the quanta I now call "excitations" align well with what I've called "the dynamic-sublime," while the quanta I call "correlations" align well with the "the combinatory-sublime." Both potentialities are also more strongly associated with the non-utile activities of "play," while the "secunda" potentialities are primarily about helping the subject survive and prosper through the hard work of discrimination.

The essay's title "Might and Myth" is also oriented upon seeing both of the prima materia functions as including a range of those fictional manifestations that do or do not possess a certain level of either "pre-epistemic" OR epistemological knowledge encoded into their discourses. I return to my example of this range from VERTICAL VIRTUES:

...I might say that from the POV of "tenor-excellence" alone, the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR excels the Lee-Ditko SPIDER-MAN, because I've detected more concrescent stories in the former than in the latter. But in terms of "vehicle-excellence," they are equals. for both generated an impressive array of icons fraught with mythopoeic POTENTIAL, even if the FF is somewhat ahead in terms of mythopoeic ACTUALITY.

So "might" would include even those elements meant to appeal to sensation, even if those elements are insufficiently organized, while "myth" would include all elements meant to appeal to intuition, even when not glossed by epistemological insights. And of course the respective "judging functions" would each be aligned with the categories of "might" and of "myth."

Possible meat for future meditations, as usual. 

CORRELATIONS AND COGITATIONS

 My attempt to distinguish between ideas and concepts in terms of narrative tropes isn't even four months old, and I've already decided to jettison those terms for another pair.

Though I labored with might and main to find a logical way to distinguish between ideas and concepts-- with the former leaning toward the mythopoeic potentiality, and the latter toward the didactic one-- the fact is that the two words have been used interchangeably for so long that nothing short of a major revision of all future dictionaries could dis-entangle them. This was borne out to me recently in a conversation with a friend who referred to science fiction as a "literature of ideas." I'd heard the phrase many other times, but hearing it once more convinced me that the word "idea" is conflated with "didactic utilitarian construct" as much or more than is "concept."

So I'm now using the words "correlation" and "cogitation." In keeping with my various observations on the combinatory mode, the mythopoeic is dominated by the process of correlation,  of bringing together disparate phenomena for the sheer pleasure of forging interesting combinations. Cogitation, however, is guided by a rational desire to suss out the imaginary relations of the phenomena in order to make some didactic point. 

I could cite examples of each mode, as I've done in other essays, but I've already cited various opposed examples of the didactic and mythopoeic potentialities in earlier essays, so there's no pressing need at this time. The point is merely to distinguish the different ways in which the tropes are formed as well as how they are used in fictional narrative. Didactic cogitations may be profitably aligned with Jung's concept of "directed thinking," while mythopoeic correlations are more in line with the psychologist's concept of "fantasy thinking." Somewhat more abstrusely, a similar dichotomy obtains with regard to Whitehead's distinction between "prehensions" and "apprehensions," an observation I reprinted in this essay:

Of central importance is Whitehead's idea of "prehension," which is dramatically defined, following Whitehead's specifications, "as that act of the soul, reaching out like an octopus to digest its experience." Fixing on "prehension" as the basic act in existentialism, an act carefully to be distinguished from "apprehension," which is based on intellectual rather than soulful understanding, Wilson rests his own case.

For that matter, though I've not written about Kant for some time, I might also align the pure pleasure of correlation-activity with the philosopher's notion of "the free play of the imagination," whose freedom stands in contrast to the restraints upon that imagination by what Kant calls cognitive understanding. But for now, I've probably put forth plenty of correlations for cogitation.

ADDENDUM: I haven't finished listening to this podcast in which Jordan Peterson hosts a discussion with Richard Dawkins. However, at one point, after listening to Peterson's Jungian rap for a while, Dawkins asks Peterson if he thinks more "in symbols or in ideas." Peterson says "symbols," and when he turns the question back on Dawkins, the latter says that he tends to think more in "ideas." 

LIMITED AND LIMITLESS CREATED HE THEM PT. 4

My last post (for now) on the subject of the limited/limitless dichotomy concerns a certain irony about the many concepts of archaic myth. On one hand, this sort of authorless myth is the essence of literature's combinatory mode, in that its unknown creators allowed their imaginations to roam freely in spawning stories about the Earth being formed from the bones of giants or giant bird's-eggs. And yet, the most developed forms of myth are also grounded in the world of limitations, as the mythmakers often invoke what I call "epistemological patterns," which are based in observations about the ways of human psychology and sociology, and of the ways of nature both in cosmological and metaphysical aspects.

As seen in my paraphrase of passages in Susanne Langer's PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY, the author disparaged the humbler forms of folklore in favor of her idea of myth-stories:

...the psychological basis of this remarkable form of nonsense [the fairy tale] lies in the fact that the story is a fabrication out of subjective symbols, not out of observed folkways and nature-ways [in "myth," with which Langer contrasts fairy tales].-- Susanne Langer, PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY, p. 173.

In subsequent essays I've remarked that I have found a great deal of mythicity-- i.e., storytelling tropes linked with epistemological patterns-- in folktales and fairytales as well. Langer's not totally wrong, though, because full-fledged myths tend to develop their myth-ideas more thoroughly than do folk-stories. In a strange anticipation of the "high art/low art" dichotomy mentioned in this essay-series' first installment, myths were canonical "high art" and the tales were the "low art" that few cultures sought to preserve. 

Yet while modern "high art" does reference epistemological patterns as well, it does so with what Frye calls "high seriousness" as well, which often (though not always) obstructs the free flow of the imagination. In contrast, modern "low art," even though its basic form is comparable to that of simple-constructed folktales, demonstrates a greater tendency to develop its myth-ideas freely. This probably comes about because modern low-art stories are no longer being crafted for an oral audience, and so the raconteurs are more likely to weave together simple plots with involved myth-ideas-- one example being the delirious Origin of the Golden Age Hawkman.

NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 3

In the first two sections of this intermittent essay-series, I argued with myself that the "significant values" of a given work, or set of works, could affect the "narrative values" of the item under discussion.  However, only recently did I consider this effect could be metaphorically illustrated in mathematical terms.

In the original ACTIVE SHARES, PASSIVE SHARES argument, I surveyed the Silver Age Marvel comic-series, of which I said:

I could and did do a statistical survey on another Old West hero: the Rawhide Kid of Marvel Comics, the company descended from the publisher who did "Ringo Kid" in the 1950s. When I counted the number of Rawhide's purely isophenomenal adventures, and compared them with those in which he'd enjoyed encounters with metaphenomenal entities, the latter worked out to about eight percent of the total stories. So, by the "51 percent rule," Rawhide could not belong to "the superhero idiom" any more than could the Ringo Kid.

But this presumes that every metaphenomenal story in the series has exactly the same value as every isophenomenal story; that one story equals a value of "one." Yet in EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, I said:

So I have at least made the essential statement that for the combinatory mode as for the dynamicity-mode, "excess of strength is proof of strength," as Nietzsche aptly said.

By this paradigm, a story with metaphenomenal elements is "stronger" than one without them, if only in the degree to which the former type forces the reader to utilize his imagination. Given that strength even in the non-imaginary world carries more value than comparative weakness, then it's arguable that every metaphenomenal RAWHIDE KID story ought to have a value of more than one.

To be sure, I fudged the original percentages by allowing a value of "one" simply to each issue of RAWHIDE KID, even though some of the earlier issues contain more than one story with the starring character. Since I felt that the feature progressed away from multiple stories fairly soon, I decided I didn't want to count out every story, with the result that I regarded the whole run of the KID as comprising 113 "points" (at least two issues featured reprints before the title went all-reprint).  Of those 113, I considered that 15 of the stories had metaphenomenal content, though I'll note here, as I did not in the earlier essay, that only two of them are "marvelous" and all of the others are "uncanny."

Now, whatever calculator gave me eight percent I evidently misused, because when I tried the operation today, it came out as a little over 14 percent. The error makes no difference to the 51 percent rule: eight and fourteen are equally unable to enjoy a "controlling interest."

So, if I posit that each isophenomenal story, because it makes no great appeal to the imagination, is only worth one point, then that gives 98 points for the roughly 98 isophenomenal stories in the Kid's original run.

Now suppose that I say that a marvelous-metaphenomenal story is worth not one, but five points. Only two stories in the run are unquestionably marvelous in nature, the "Red Raven" story and the "Living Totem" tale, so with those added we have 10 points for the stories themselves, 108 points for the grand total.

Then there are thirteen "uncanny" stories, so I'll arbitrarily assign them three points to each of these. So the subtotal of metaphenomenal stories becomes 10 + 39, equaling 49, and the total points overall are 147. Out of 147, 49 is roughly 33 percent. It's still not 51 percent or more, but it begins to look more like the sort of "passive share" I argued about earlier.

Now, I could continue to jigger the ratings of the metaphenomenal stories until they did raise above fifty-one percent, but if I set that standard in stone, then it would be totally arbitrary. By asserting greater values for the metaphenomenal stories in a merely theoretical manner, this adjusted paradigm adequately illustrates the principle of the passive share I sought to explore.

A contrasting example, brought up in NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 2. was that of the 1960s TV serial LOST IN SPACE. I wasn't concerned with sussing out phenomenology here, but the appearance of the combative mode, and as with RAWHIDE I assigned every story (including parts of continued stories) just one point. Eighty-three stories meant eighty-three total points, Nineteen of the episodes were combative, which registers as 23 percent of the whole.

But to be consistent with my assertions in EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE, the higher dynamicities of a combative work should be valued higher than those that lack this dynamicity. So the total number of points for the subcombative episodes, assigning each one point, is 64.

Since combative dynamicity doesn't make quite the same appeal to the imagination as does metaphenomenality, I'll conservatively assign the value of three to the nineteen episodes. So the subtotal for the combative episodes is 57 and the overall total is 121. The subtotal is about 44 percent of the total, so it too does not meet the 51 percent criteria, though it too is closer to being a "passive share." However, because combative adventure does not seem to have been as important to LOST IN SPACE as metaphenomenal content was to RAWHIDE KID, it's possible that the significant value of the former might have a negativizing effect upon the whole of the teleseries. More on that later, if I get suitably inspired.

NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 2

Though this post continues some of the thoughts from Part 1, I was tempted to title it something like "Narrative and Significant Dominance in the Two Modes." But that would've been more work to type.

The essential theme of AMPLITUDE PART 1 was to re-examine once more the principles by which I established my literary reading of the economic idea of "active and passive shares." However, though that essay was done in October 2018, its general principles were stated in June 2017 in the short essay EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE:

So I have at least made the essential statement that for the combinatory mode as for the dynamicity-mode, "excess of strength is proof of strength," as Nietzsche aptly said.

Now, in AMPLITUDE I cited two completed serial runs, using the Silver Age RAWHIDE KID as an example of a work with an "active share" with respect to the combinatory mode, and the 1960s LOST IN SPACE as an example of a work with a "passive share" with respect to the dynamicity mode. Generally speaking, I've aligned the two modes in line with the "narrative" and "significant" values outlined by Northrop Frye. The combinatory mode aligns with "significant values," since only the reader, the audience who interprets a work's significance, can suss out the dominant phenomenality of a work or group of works. The dynamicity-mode aligns with "narrative values," since such values are tied in with the internal values of the story, in this case being whether or not the characters do or do not wield exceptional levels of power in order to produce the narrative.

For that reason, I stated that even though only about nine percent of all RAWHIDE KID stories had metaphenomenal elements, the ones that did have such elements assumed a "value of significance" in the series," Conversely, though there were 23 percent of the LOST IN SPACE stories that boasted scenes of combative dynamicity, I argued that these scenes had a nugatory "value of significance" according to the series' tendency to assert a more pervasive "value of significance" that did not support the combative mode.

What it essentially comes down to is: does a particular aspect of storytelling play a vital role in the story, or series of stories, or is it less than vital?

If the role of this aspect has a strong amplitude, either with respect to narrative or significant values, then it is dominant. If the role of this aspect has a weak amplitude, with respect to either value, then it is, to revive an earlier term, "subdominant."

Some examples may be forthcoming in future.

THE BEAUTY OF GRAVITY

In the last two sections of FOUR AGES OF DYNAMIS, I found myself questioning the conclusions I'd made in the 2012 essay-series GRAVITY'S CROSSBOW. In Part 1, I wrote:

I've noted before that of all the major philosophers to write about sublimity in connection with literature, Edmund Burke is one of the most profligate in providing examples.  However, I note that most of his examples fall into one of two mythoi: the "drama" (PARADISE LOST, HENRY IV) or the "adventure" (THE FAERIE QUEENE).  Schopenhauer, for his part, recognizes only "tragedy" (which I regard as identical with the category "drama") as sublime.
Moving to those readerships concerned with "the sense of wonder," it's my informal impression that when fans of fantasy and SF wax enthusiastic about those works with that quality, they rarely if ever center upon works of the other two mythoi, "comedy" and "irony."  In the domain of prose, works like Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END or Tolkien's LORD OF THE RINGS are celebrated for their ability to elicit wonder.  But though one can find science-fictional marvels and magical mysteries in such works as Fredric Brown's WHAT MAD UNIVERSE or the deCamp-Pratt COMPLEAT ENCHANTER, I would say such works-- both of which are comedies-- are never celebrated for the "sense of wonder."  Ironic science fiction is often celebrated for its intellectual rigor-- indeed, if one reads Kingsley Amis' NEW MAPS FROM HELL, one gets the impression that no one ever wrote good SF but Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth-- but Amis praises them for satirical visions, not for the "sense of wonder."
So, are comedy and irony in some way inimical to the sense of wonder? 

I then explored Schopenhauer's remarks on how the "serious" forms of literature encouraged emotional investment while the "ludicrous" forms did not, and, glossing this statement by categorizing the forms along Fryean lines, I attempted to show reasons why comedies and ironies did not manifest subimity in the form of "the sense of wonder."

Now, at the time I wrote the CROSSBOW series, my definition of sublimity was still fuzzy, as were some of the philosophical definitions available to me. A year later, I wrote the series TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I, in which I distinguished two forms of sublimity, "the dynamic-sublime," more or less identical with Kant's formulation in CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, and "the combinatory-sublime," which I considered more applicable to literature than Kant's second form, "the mathematical-sublime." Thus, early in the same month that I wrote the CROSSBOW series, I cited (in the essay SUBLIMELY SUPER) this example of the literary sublime:

This example suggests to me is that at the time I was groping toward a vision of the combinatory-sublime, which in the aforesaid essay I defined as sublime because of its appeal to "unboundedness."

So this was the kind of sublimity I found lacking in various works of SF/fantasy, among them being the above examples of works by Frederic Brown and Pohl-and-Kornbluth.

Now, my current system does not claim that comedies or ironies are unable to conjure with either "the dynamic-sublime" or "the combinatory-sublime." In 2012 I had not aligned my concept of "mythicity" with that of the combinatory mode, and so, in the mythcomics essays I began in 2011, I had no problem in finding examples of high mythicity for both comedies (the URUSEI YATSURA story "A Good Catch") and ironies (the "Ed the Happy Clown" continuity from YUMMY FUR).

However, I do think Schopenhauer's distinction does apply to one SUBCATEGORY of the combinatory-sublime. I think it's more difficult for "ludicrous narratives" to bring forth the specific "sense of wonder" theme of "unbounded beauty," the sort of thing one can also get from the great "mind-meld" in CHILDHOOD'S END or Tolkien's vision of elvish elegance in LORD OF THE RINGS. Beauty is harder to get across in works of the ludicrous, no matter the intensity of the "tonal levity" involved. In comedies the reader learns to expect to see another joke or slapstick pratfall just around the corner, while in ironies the reader certainly doesn't expect to see any form of beauty, unbounded or otherwise, to stand against the relentless ennui of entropy.

And thus what I wrote regarding the nature of "conviction" in the CROSSBOW series similarly applies not to the combinatory-sublime in general, but specifically to the subcategory of unbounded beauty.

Because even the unbounded type of beauty needs some degree of gravity, if only for contrast.

STRENGTH AND SUBSTANCE

Here's a small revision to my terminology in this section of GOOD WILL QUANTUMS PT. 2:

....the function of sensation as Jung and I conceive it is entirely "pre-cognitive," while that of feeling is "post-cognitive." It doesn't help me at all to use 'affect" in both senses, so from now on I will take the first-stated position: "affects" are *quanta* that belong to the post-cognitive function of feeling. In contrast, the function of sensation, being non-judgmental, is concerned rather with dynamicity in its purest state, as stimuli that either enhance or detract from the subject's life-quality. This brings me back to Kant's concept of dynamicity as "might" or "strength," and thus I reconfigure the earlier statement of the potentialities thusly:

The KINETIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of strength-quanta.

The DRAMATIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of affect-quanta.

The DIDACTIC (formerly "thematic") is a potentiality that describes the relationships of idea-quanta.

The MYTHOPOEIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of symbol-quanta.

There's a viable logic in defining the quanta of the sensation-function as "strength" or even "might," given that I've sometimes used the latter term as a catchall for any and all physical activity-- which would include an organism's attempt to suss out its environment through the use of the senses. Yet both terms don't seem wholly adequate to describe what the organism is specifically doing when it uses its senses, as opposed to other activities.

I still believe that sensation must be concerned with "stimuli that either enhance or detract from the subject's life-quality," and that this is the foundation for all later formulations about "the good and the bad," and for the attempts of higher organisms to articulate their "gut feelings" into the full-blown affects that belong to the function of feeling. But the word "strength" doesn't work so well, even though I chose it in part to ground the feeling of sensation within the mode of dynamicity. just as the other irrational function, that of intuition, is grounded within the combinatory mode.

The activity of Creature A's sensation-function does have its "strength" associations, at least with respect to whether Creature B can be eaten, or may try to eat Creature A. And yet, there are numerous examples where there is no competitive aspect to sensing one's environment. Just moving about in the environment involves sensing what it's like. For birds it's understanding. through the senses, the currents of the air; for fish, it's understanding, through the senses, the currents of the sea, and so on.

What all sensory activities seem to hold in common is not so much strength or might but *potency.* The sea has a potency both to help a fish find its prey and to escape its predators, and that potency is realized only through the creature's senses.

I have actually uses "potency" earlier in an unrelated sense in 2014's POWER AND POTENCY, but given that I'm so thoroughly influenced by Northrop Frye, I think I would be remiss if I didn't coin at least a handful of terms that had more than one distinct meaning in my system. Also, given the relationship of the terms "kinetic" and "potential" in physics, it makes sense in literary terms for "the kinetic" to arise from something that at least sounds like "the potential."

Thus, in any future meditations about the potentiality of the kinetic:

The KINETIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of potency-quanta.

EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE

Having recently referenced the "excess" theory last put forth in 2013's  THE NARRATIVE RULE OF EXCESS, I began wondering to myself if, having applied this standard to the mode of dynamicity, whether I had sufficiently examined it with respect to the combinatory mode as well.

I did find that I had at least mentioned the topic in THE AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE PART 3, however:

Wheelwright's term "amplitude," which he applies to differing levels of poetic resonance, suggested itself as a substitute-- partly because the word connotes the quality of being ample, and thus coheres with my formulation of THE NARRATIVE RULE OF EXCESS. 

So I have at least made the essential statement that for the combinatory mode as for the dynamicity-mode, "excess of strength is proof of strength," as Nietzsche aptly said.

This formulation might be further glossed with reference to Bataille's Nietzchean notions of "acquisition" and "expenditure," particularly since I haven't  returned to Bataille-land since QUICK CANTER ON A HOBBESIAN HORSE, written about four months previous to NARRATIVE RULE.

Time will tell if I get round to such an expansion.

BEFALL, DULL CARE

The lyrics of this traditional folklore song adjure the listener to bid "begone" to "dull care" in favor of song and dance.

I prithee, be gone from me, Begone! dull care, You and I shall never agree. Long time hast thou been tarrying here, And fain thou wouldst me kill, But i' faith, dull care, Thou never shall have thy will.

However, an awful lot of modern literature is devoted to embracing "dull care" as an indication that the author is able to accomplish the "tough-minded" task of representing reality-as-it-really-is. This is more than simply an attention to verisimilitude. Rather, it is a philosophical rejection of the idea that the world can ever transcend what various authors have termed "the dull round of existence."

By the criteria I introduced in VERTICAL VIRTUES PT. 2, "transcendence" of a purely horizontal, non-sublime nature can occur in naturalistic works like Mitchell's GONE WITH THE WIND. Of course, WIND, though not in any way sublime, is focused on portraying the life of Scarlett O'Hara as intensely interesting. In JOINED AT THE TRIP PT. 4, I mentioned another work of naturalistic phenomenality-- J.M. Coetzee's DISGRACE-- though not in a direct one-on-one comparison to GWTW. But I will make such a comparison now: DISGRACE is the sort of work that is dedicated to telling a dull story, for the apparent purpose of showing reality as dull, the better to contrast said work to the excitement of escapist fiction.

Now, my ruminations on the different forms of transcendence obliged me, in COMPENSATION CONSIDERATIONS PT.. 4, to refine my earlier concepts of the two forms of the sublime, in order to locate both forms within more general principles" the "combinatory-sublime" with a "combinatory mode" and the "dynamic-sublime" within a "dynamicity mode." I have also stated that works within the uncanny and marvelous phenomenalities inherently possessed greater potential for combinations than did the naturalistic. However, though the principal use of both phenomenalities is to evoke different forms of "strangeness," there have been many attempts to vary this dominant approach. In COMBINATORY-GLORY, I said that "not all works in the marvelous phenomenality are equally able to inspire the affect of the combinatory-sublime." My proximate reference was to a traditional folktale, "The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was," because even though the tale shows its protagonist encountering assorted fearful monsters, the creatures don't really inspire the sublime sense of "strangeness" because the story's focus is upon the tale's main joke: that the young man overcomes all these monsters but learns "fear" (of a sort) from a woman.

That said, the folktale does not offer what I'm seeking: a narrative that manages to undermine the potential of the combinatory-sublime appropriate to the marvelous, just as DISGRACE fails to evoke even the limited horizontal transcendence possible in naturalistic works of art. I haven't reviewed too many metaphenomenal works that fully embrace "dull care," but I have encountered such works in "arty" prose science fiction or fantasy. Some examples would include Samuel R. Delany's novel TRITON and Kazuo Ishiguro's THE BURIED GIANT. These two novels have a few of the virtues of Mitchell, but they tend to favor the vices of Coetzee. I also regard both novels, like DISGRACE, as inconsummate works, by reason of their tendency to "overthink the overthought."  But if nothing else, the Delany and Ishiguro works serve to illustrate that not all works in the marvelous phenomenality necessarily deliver the appeal of the combinatory-sublime.

At the same time, just as GONE WITH THE WIND delivers on "horizontal transcendence" in marked contrast to the failings of DISGRACE, there are certainly uncanny or marvelous works that lack vertical transcendence (a.k.a. sublimity) but manage to produce some level of horizontal transcendence, thus taking advantage of the more general pattern of the combinatory mode. Ishiguro's earlier SF-work NEVER LET ME GO, while also devoted to "dull care," at least benefits from a better handling of interpersonal relationships, though nothing comparable to the level of Mitchell's accomplishment.

GOOD WILL QUANTUMS PT. 2

I gave one definition of the word "potentiality" in Part One, but I was unaware when I gave the term a Jungian-Fryean connotation that it also had jargonistic applications in the world of quantum mechanics.  Not being heavily into quantum mechanics, I hadn't encountered the datum stated in the Wikipedia article: that David Bohm and Basil Hiley defined "quantum potential/ potentiality" as "an information potential which acts upon a quantum particle." I did not have this in mind when I invoked the metaphor of the quantum particle in the essay THE QUANTUM THEORY OF DYNAMICITY, but the Bohm-Hiley statement provides a strong parallel to one of my long-stated statements about the relationship of literary archetypes to the information that they can be made to convey, as referenced in JUNG LOVE, FIRST LOVE. 

When I wrote QUANTUM THEORY, I was simply seeking to provide symmetry. I had established that I regarded mythicity as a discourse within the combinatory mode, and it eventually occurred to me that dynamicity could equally be defined as a discourse, but one within the corresponding mode of the dynamic mode. In THEORY I cited various ways in which I perceived "power" as taking different discursive forms within various works within the same genres: comparing, for instance, the "poor discourse" of the Shooter-Zeck SECRET WARS to the "good discourse" of the Lee-Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR. In essence, I represented the two modes principally with reference to Jung's two "irrational functions" when I stated:

Mythicity= the discourse of symbolic constructions

Dynamicity= the discourse of quantum constructions.

I did not draw any parallels in THEORY between the symbolizing nature of the "intuition function," nor to the sensory nature of the "sensation function." I used the term "quantum constructions" simply because in physics the word "quantum" is defined as "the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction." Since I was speaking of both mythicity and dynamicity as relationships between literary phenomena, I coined the term "quantum constructions" as short-hand for the ways in which different entities interact with one another on the plane of dynamicity, be it through direct violence, like that of a superhero, or through indirect influence, as per my example of Ibsen's HEDDA GABLER.

However, in the ensuing months I continued meditating on the subject of the four potentialites that I extrapolated from Jung's four functions. Many writers (not least Jung) had opined that the rational function of thinking developed out of the irrational function of intuition, but not as much had been written about a corresponding relationship between the rational function of feeling and the irrational function of sensation. Indeed, my initial statement of the potentialities from FOUR BY FOUR might have suggested too much distinction between the four:

The KINETIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of sensations.

The DRAMATIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of discrete personalities.

The DIDACTIC (formerly "thematic") is a potentiality that describes the relationships of abstract ideas.

The MYTHOPOEIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of symbols.

Slowly the logical symmetry settled in. If "symbolic constructions" are at the root of "ideational constructions," then there must be a parallel between the other two functions. What I initially called "quantum constructions" originally implied simply the perceiving subject's experience of his own body and other bodies as giving the subject either pleasant or unpleasant sensations. "Discrete personalities" was a reference was based in my understanding of Jung's interpretation of feeling as a more rational meditation as to WHY one's own body or other bodies became a source of a variety of sensations, including those situations in which the pleasant and unpleasant might intertwine. At the time I choose not to delve into PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES to review Jung's position, given that my extrapolation of the potentialities is not strictly Jungian anyway.

My solution to the problem of philosophical symmetry, then, is to propose that all four of the potentialities can be viewed as means by which the perceiving subject-- whether a real person or a literary construct-- sorts out different *QUANTA* of information that the subject encounters in the world. But the solution comes with another problem: how are these quanta at once alike and yet different?

One cornerstone of my theory is the rethinking of Aristotle's "pity and terror" into what I consider a more pleasing terminology: that of "sympathetic affects" and "antipathetic affects," as explored in this 2013 essay.  Another Wikipedia essay states that the term "affect" has in psychology assorted connotations.

Many theorists (e.g., Lazarus, 1982) consider affect to be post-cognitive: elicited only after a certain amount of cognitive processing of information has been accomplished. In this view, such affective reactions as liking, disliking, evaluation, or the experience of pleasure or displeasure each result from a different prior cognitive process that makes a variety of content discriminations and identifies features, examines them to find value, and weighs them according to their contributions (Brewin, 1989). Some scholars (e.g., Lerner and Keltner 2000) argue that affect can be both pre- and post-cognitive: initial emotional responses produce thoughts, which produce affect. In a further iteration, some scholars argue that affect is necessary for enabling more rational modes of cognition (e.g., Damasio 1994).

Plainly the function of sensation as Jung and I conceive it is entirely "pre-cognitive," while that of feeling is "post-cognitive." It doesn't help me at all to use 'affect" in both senses, so from now on I will take the first-stated position: "affects" are *quanta* that belong to the post-cognitive function of feeling. In contrast, the function of sensation, being non-judgmental, is concerned rather with dynamicity in its purest state, as stimuli that either enhance or detract from the subject's life-quality. This brings me back to Kant's concept of dynamicity as "might" or "strength," and thus I reconfigure the earlier statement of the potentialities thusly:

The KINETIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of strength-quanta.

The DRAMATIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of affect-quanta.

The DIDACTIC (formerly "thematic") is a potentiality that describes the relationships of idea-quanta.

The MYTHOPOEIC is a potentiality that describes the relationships of symbol-quanta.

Within a fictional context, as stated before, all of these quanta are, unlike real energy-quanta, only real insofar as readers/audiences experience them as incarnations of the author's *WILL,* as stated in SEVEN WAYS FROM SCHOPENHAUER.  This "unified field theory" of the four potentialities will probably not inspire in critics the degree of enthusiasm quantum physicists experience as they cover a similar unification between the "four physical forces," but such a theory does make it somewhat easier to talk about the different forms of "will" which creators choose to emphasize.

As a closing note, I return to this statement from the first GOOD WILL QUANTUMS:

...I perceive a general principle: that density is the means by which the reader subconsciously rates one creator above another: because the reader believes that Creator A can better describe a set of relationships so "densely" that it takes on the quality of "lived experience."

But although "density/complexity" is the primary criterion of fictional excellence in any potentiality, there is a role for Raymond Durgnat's "aesthetic of simplicity." Simplicity is the mode or modes through whcih an author seeks to communicate complexity in a pleasing manner, so that the reader absorbs the complexity without the sense of having it forced down his throat. More on this point later.

ARCHETYPE AND ARTIFICE PT. 3

So far the only thing I've written about any linkage between archetypes and the concept of artifice-- which should properly be considered a "mode" given that it, like verisimilitude, deals with ways that authors create their stuff-- is this section from EFFICACY, MEET MYTH:

if myth [NOTE: as Frye is using the term] is really defined by the transhuman powers of deities, then what is being transmitted from the clearly mythic story of "Euripides' Ion" (where the protagonist is the offspring of a god) to the verisimilitudinous story of Oliver Twist? It seems likely to me that the way myth [NOTE: by which *I* mean "archaic mythology"] interacts with "the constructive principles of story-telling" is that myth supplies archetypes that have an expressive, emotive appeal irrespective of their phenomenal context. Thus, Frye is much nearer to the truth later in the ANATOMY, when he defines archetypes as "complex variables." I believe that though the literary critic distanced himself from the psychological views of Jung, Frye may have been exposed to Jung's argument about the archetypes as a structuring principle.

So what Frye calls "the constructive principles of story-telling" should take in both "verisimilitude" and what I have renamed "artifice," since in the same section where he introduces his two terms, he states that, "Myth, then, is one extreme of literary design; naturalism is the other."   

Now, though Frye elsewhere defined archetypes as "complex variables," I don't think he's always consistent in emphasizing their complexity, be it potential or actual. For instance, I don't deem the use of the "birth-mystery plot" in OLIVER TWIST to be particularly complex. Though I believe Frye had been exposed to some modern semiotic theory, such as I invoke in my differentiation between simple and complex variables, he sometimes uses the word "archetype" to describe any trope in a modern story that resembles a story from archaic myth.

I, however, favor the Segal definition of the archetype cited earlier, since I think it best coheres with Jung's writings on the subject:

An archetypal experience is not any emotional event but only an overwhelming one, the extraordinariness of which stems exactly from the power of the archetype encountered through projection.

What makes archetypes "overwhelming?" I would say that it is the same complexity of associations that I have elsewhere termed "the combinatory sublime." Simpler associations characterize simple variables, and I would say that the "birth-mystery" aspect of OLIVER TWIST is pretty simple, even compared to its use in, say, GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

We can easily imagine that Dickens, in composing both works, draws upon his knowledge of "birth-mystery" plots in earlier myths and literary works. But if OLIVER is a simple version of such plots, and EXPECTATIONS is a complex one, then it stands to reason that artifice as a mode embraces both simple variables ("stereotypes") and complex variables ("archetypes.")

More to come in Part 4.

MY DALLIANCE WITH DYNAMIS

It was about four years ago that I wrote I made a distinction between *dynamicity* and *dynamis.* I've noted that though I continued to write about the former without stinting, *dynamis* fell by the wayside. By 2013 the concept was more or less subsumed by the notion of the "combinatory-sublime," in its turn subsumed by a more generalized "combinatory mode."

I'm sure that I dwelt on the Greek term for so long purely because Frye had invoked it to mean "power of action" in THE ANATOMY OF CRITICISM. Frye actually does not use the term all that often in the whole of the book, though I would say that his Aristotle-derived concept of dynamis informs the framework of his theory. But I found that Frye had failed to distinguish between physical power of action of characters within the narrative, and the power of action conferred upon those characters by extra-diegetical forces, meaning, the author and/or the culture of the author.

In NOTES ON NORTHROP FRYE AND THE NUM-THEORY, written contemporaneously with the GRAVITY'S CROSSBOW essay-series, I said:

The most problematic aspect of Frye’s *dynamis* schema is that in its attempt to cohere with Aristotle’s pattern, it implies that “the marvelous” is located purely within the mythoi of myth and romance.  I’m sure that, even staying within the confines of the canonical “high” literature with which Frye concerns himself, the scholar was quite cognizant that there exist many literary works which have marvelous content but which are not adventure-romances as Frye himself defines that mythos.  Apuleis’ novel THE GOLDEN ASS concerns a man magically changed into an ass, who then listens in on the secret conversations of human beings, while Shakespeare’s TEMPEST concerns a genuine practitioner of magic—but neither work is centered upon what Frye terms the *agon,* the conflict between representatives of good and evil.  If one agrees with me that these two works belong to other mythoi—my choices would be “comedy” for one and “drama” for the other—then it does not make logical sense to say, or even to imply, that aspects of marvelous phenomenality appear only in the adventure-romance category.

GRAVITY'S CROSSBOW PART 3 used Frye to fight Frye, counteracting the logical problems of one work with solutions from another:

...I've drawn attention to a dichotomy Frye introduced about 4-5 years before the publication of ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, in an essay entitled "The Archetypes of Literature," sort of a dry run for ANATOMY.  The dichotomy was between what he called the "narrative values" and the "significant values" of any given narrative.  The former set of values denote those aspects of the narrative that are important to its function as a narrative, while the latter set are relevant to those that cause the narrative to be significant to audiences in a moral, ethical or aesthetic sense (my definition).  As it happens, though Frye does not repeat these terms in ANATOMY, he does, within the same chapter that introduces his reformulation of "power of action," draw a distinction between "fictional modes" and "thematic modes."  These are so close in essence to the earlier terms that I choose to keep using the earlier ones.

Later, in the aforementioned DYNAMIS VS. DYNAMICITY, I gave a pertinent example:

...in future uses, I'll define *dynamis* only as a significant value, in that the character "power of action" in the story is pre-ordained by the type of story in which he finds himself, be it adventure, comedy, irony or drama.

*Dynamicity,* in contrast, denotes a "narrative value" in that the level or character of a protagonist (as well as that of his allies or antagonists) is a value *within* the sphere of the narrative.  To cite one of my earlier examples, Ranma Saotome doesn't know that he's in a comic universe. His level of power, as well as his struggles against the aforesaid antagonists, are no less dynamic than those of adventure-heroine Buffy Summers.

Without pressing the point too much, this means that even though Buffy Summers and Ranma Saotome may have roughly covalent levels of *dynamicity,* their *dynamis* is very different. Buffy is not made "the goat" nearly as often as Ranma is, and this disparity in *dynamis* comes about because of those extra-diegetical forces I mentioned above.  Joss Whedon and Rumiko Takahashi both display a strong penchant for intense action and for incongruous moments of humor, but in these two particular works, Whedon has chosen to emphasize the "adventure mythos" while Takahashi has concentrated upon the "comedy mythos."

Frye's concept of a "power of action" based in his four mythoi was, in essence, a little too limiting as I continued, throughout 2012 and 2013, to investigate the concepts of Kantian sublimity as it applied to literature. However, the more I investigated sublimity, the less it seemed to me that it could be explained purely by the reader's experience of fictional dynamicity, which was the only part of Kant's sublimity-concept that I found useful for literature. I did, slightly before the CROSSBOW series, intuit a parallel between the affects of "the dynamic-sublime" and those of mythicity, as seen in SUBLIMITY VS. MYTHICITY, where I quoted a section from a 2011 essay:

Neither Burke nor Kant demonstrate any great fascination with mythic symbolism as such. However, I would expand some of the terms they use to describe the sublime, such as "might" or "magnificence," to include the sense of a greater mythic pattern that brings the events of a given story into the wider "family" of mythic narrative.

Yet it still took me another year to realize that the "greater mythic pattern," for authors more than philosophers, is the totality of plot-functions and character-types from which they may choose, This led to the TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I series, whose key statement appears in Part II:

The "infinity" of which Yeats speaks here-- like the "richness and profusion of images" I found in Edmund Burke-- suggests another form of the sublime with a different nature than the "dynamically sublime."  It is one that overwhelms in a manner roughly analogous to the "mathematically sublime," but the "magnitude" is one that stems not from physical size, but from the magnitude of how many conceivable connections can be made within a given phenomenality.

I then followed up on my phenomenality-statement in OUT WITH THE OLD PROBABILITY, IN WITH THE NEW INTELLIGIBILITY:

Now I would rephrase [my earlier statement] to say that the combinatory-sublime arises rather from the transgression upon the reader's expectations in terms of intelligibility and regularity. DIRTY HARRY, a naturalistic work which conforms to general expectations regarding intelligibility and regularity, has its own proper level of mythicity but is not likely to inspire a high level of the combinatory-sublime because of said conformity. ENTER THE DRAGON conforms to expectations regarding regularity but not intelligibility; being "anti-intelligible," it has a higher potential to arouse the combinatory-sublime. And STAR WARS, which violates both intelligibility and regularity, has the greatest mythicity of the three in reality, as well as the greatest potential for symbolic combinations and thus for the combinatory-sublime.

In this essay I reversed an earlier claim in which I opined that mythicity was not affected by the narrative's phenomenality. I still maintain that a given metaphenomenal work, in contrast to any given isophenomenal work, inherently possesses more potential for "symbolic combinations" by virtue of violating one or more of the expectations regarding causal nature.  These combinations, however, are also pre-determined not only by the author selecting the nature of his work's phenomenality, but also by his selecting the types of plots and characters that will determine his "thematic" or "significant" approach. Thus, in 2014 I meditated on the role of a character's mythic type, rather than his power, as having a noteworthy impact on the impression he makes:

At present I have not found a necessary connection between the two forms of the sublime.  It does suggest to me how some figures of comparatively low dynamicity can suggest that they are more powerful than they really are. I conclude that it is because of the effect of the combinatory-sublime, which seems to invest such figures with a larger-than-life "mana."-- THE PHENOMENALITY OF PSYCHOS.

Or, to put it as I might have back in 2012: "Norman Bates might not have much in the way of *dynamicity,* but he sure does have a dynamic *dynamis.*"

MORE AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE

In January and February 2016 I wrote three AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE essays, starting here, on the subject of using this term to gauge the different elaborations of the combinatory mode. In the first essay, I mentioned that even though the Justice Leaguers were the stars of the Gardner Fox story "Secret of the Sinister Sorcerers," they were also merely functional presences within the story, and that the greatest "amplitude of associations" (a.k.a., "super-functionality") belonged to the three villains of the story.

Now, at the same time, I must specify that this amplitude remains on the level of what I've called "the underthought," since this level of authorial concentrations deals with what Frye called "the progression of images and metaphors," presumably without any prior intellectual arrangement. The "overthought," in contrast, is what I (though not Frye) have called the author's "predetermined complexes of ideas."

With this determination of symbolic discourse in the JUSTICE LEAGUE story in mind, I started re-considering the role of the villains in a much earlier story, "Injustice Society of the World."  This tale of the Justice League's predecessors, the Justice Society, was scripted by Robert Kanigher, though Kanigher substantially built upon the Justice Society mythos largely created by Gardner Fox.

In my analysis, I wrote:

Much of the time, the JSA heroes won their battles a little too easily, partly because so many of their foes were just ordinary thugs and swindlers. I've argued elsewhere that one has to respect the gumption of commonplace crooks in challenging do-gooders who had godlike powers, but it still didn't usually give rise to many memorable battles.
Kanigher, though, seems to understand the potential appeal of a group that expouses an ethic of evil opposed to that of the heroes' belief in good.

In essence, the Kanigher story follows the same opposition in terms of the mere functionality of the heroes and the super-functionality of the villains. And yet, Kanigher's approach lacks the sheer combinatory delight that Fox appears to take in all the beings of "Magic-Land." The "complex of ideas" in "Injustice Society" may not be all that "complex" compared to the more high-minded artcomics. Still, the basic concept seems to proceed from a straightforward idea; that of turning the goody-goody ethics of the established Justice Society adventures on its head, by devices like showing robots impersonating representatives of law and order, or having the Justice Society undergo a faux trial for their "crimes against crime."

And yet, like a lot of Kanigher's work, the writer doesn't seem to elaborate his characters in a symbolic sense. Kanigher produced dozens, perhaps hundreds, of stories for DC Comics over a period of roughly thirty years. The 1966 tale "Beware of Poison Ivy" proves one exception to this tendency, but usually Kanigher doesn't lavish as much sheer symbol-happy imagination upon his characters as does Gardner Fox. Kanigher favors almost schematic arrangements of his plots and the characters caught up in them, and thus I think most though not all of his stories follow the process of "the overthought" rather than that of "the underthought." As a result, even the individual villains in the Injustice Society story leave something to be desired in the mythicity department; they only take on mythic status through their association. This also stands in contradistinction to Fox's creativity in giving each of his "Sinister Sorcerers" a distinct mythic persona.

On a side-note: I would say that O'Donoghue's PHOEBE ZEIT-GEIST also elaborates its symbolic discourse through an overthought-process: everything in it is predetermined by O'Donoghue's scathing opinions on "damsel in distress" fiction. There's a rough parallel, too, in the menaces that dog Phoebe's track: they only have mythic status in the sense that they're a concatenation of stock horrors familiar through pop-fictional usage. Phoebe herself is something of an incarnation of what Nietzsche called "negative will," in that she exists just to be tormented, and thus I would tend to see her also as possessing less amplitude than her tormentors, even though she too is "the star of the show."

THE AMPLITUDE ATTITUDE PT. 3

In the end, no matter what specific arguments I put forth, they boil down to the subjective feeling that BEAST [FROM 20,000 FATHOMS] only tromps its way over the megadynamicity threshold, while [THE GIANT] BEHEMOTH "storms" across, in part because it shows a greater propensity toward the "dynamic-sublime."-- STORMING THE THRESHOLD PART. 2.

I don't know how important yet another new term will prove to the ongoing evolution of my lit-crit theory, but I've been thinking about giving a name to this "greater propensity" since late last year. I reread THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA around that time, and so found myself meditating further on Nietzsche's complex theory of "self-overcoming," particularly in COMBAT PLAY PT. 4.

In this essay I wrote: "Only those who consciously admitted the allure of mastery, of wielding power over others, had any true capacity for self-overcoming." Since the German term for this process proves unwieldy, I considered coining a term along the lines of "the overcoming factor" that could applied not to human societies-- which is Nietzsche's focus-- but to literary creations as imagined representations of power relations. But "overcoming factor" would be something that might require re-explanation over time.

Wheelwright's term "amplitude," which he applies to differing levels of poetic resonance, suggested itself as a substitute-- partly because the word connotes the quality of being ample, and thus coheres with my formulation of THE NARRATIVE RULE OF EXCESS. But in addition, "amplitude" has a more physical connotation, one akin to the geometrical representations I used here. This Wiki essay cites the use of the term in classical physics, and the amplitude-type that most coheres with my metaphor would seem to be that of "peak amplitude:"

If the reference is zero, [peak amplitude] is the maximum absolute value of the signal; if the reference is a mean value, the peak amplitude is the maximum absolute value of the difference from that reference.

Even a hypothetical "zero" would not really apply to either of my two modes: the combinatory mode or the dynamicity mode. With regard to the first, in past essays I've subscribed to Wheelwright's view that even the simplest form of symbolic discourse, the "monosignative," always has a potential to assume greater levels of symbolic complexity. With regard to the second, I've also noted that even characters that register as "microdynamic" may have some minor abilities in the realm of self-defense, as shown by the example of Vicky Vale in this essay. Therefore, the base level of both "monosignativity" and "microdynamicity" should be seen as a "mean value" of what is possible within a fictional universe.

"Peak amplitude," then, represents the artist's ability to go beyond the mean values of both modes, and to "storm" into the more rarified domains of the sublime. Of course the artist will always have some need of the mean values, what I've also called "the purely functional." But the term amplitude may serve better to bridge abstract concepts like "functional" and "super-functional," or any other such concepts I continue to explore here.

ACTIVE SHARE, PASSIVE SHARE PT. 2

In Part 1,  I observed that as far as the "dynamic-sublime" was concerned, the domains they generate were strictly separated from one another:.

The dynamicities of the marvelous and the uncanny cannot manifest within the sphere of the naturalistic at all, because they depend on the alteration of one or both of the rules of causation, and anything that even resembles the tropes of the uncanny or marvelous is subsumed into the naturalistic.

By this general rule, both of the examples cited in the earlier essay-- the totality of serial adventures of both Atlas' RINGO KID and Marvel's RAWHIDE KID-- would be metaphenomenal. Even if the Ringo Kid only has one measly adventure with metaphenomenal content, it means that his universe obeys some if not all of the fictional rules common to other fantasy-worlds-- for instance, the greater "Marvel Universe" into which Ringo was officially inducted in the course of a 1970s AVENGERS story.

And yet, it seems counter-intuitive to place Ringo in the exact same type of marvelous domain as a literal superhuman like Captain America, or a domain that seems dominantly uncanny when considered apart from the Marvel Universe, like the domain of Marvel's masked western hero the Two-Gun Kid. Even if Two-Gun Kid had never encountered anything but naturalistic opponents, his attire would still conform to the uncanny trope of "outre outfits," thus placing him within the phenomenal domain of the uncanny.

In the case of the combinatory-sublime, however, tropes that relate to the metaphenomenal domains do not automatically overrule those of the isopheomenal, at least not within the realm of a serial concept. In a serial, if the focal presence does not itself reproduce significant tropes of the metaphenomenal, then one must examine the phenomenality of all ancillary presences in the totality of the stories.

Both RINGO KID and RAWHIDE KID concern isophenomenal cowpokes who dominantly battle against isophenomenal opponents. Both, using the "shareholder" metaphor I introduced, "majority shareholders" in the isophenomenal and "minority shareholders" in the metaphenomenal.  Being a "minority shareholder" means a dimunition of the serial's overall potential for symbolic combinations. Rawhide has a more extensive history of metaphenomenal encounters, so while he's still not in the same kind of fictional world as Captain America and the Two-Gun Kid, he is closer to their combinatory potential than Ringo is.

Heroes whose adventures almost always have elements of the metaphenomenal-- whether marvelous like Captain America, or uncanny like Two-Gun-- would subsume the other two phenomenalities within the dominant one. So the geometrical model would look much like the one used for the DSD, except with the stipulation that the whole is solid, rather than having each circle isolated from the other:

Rawhide's serial adventures don't comprise a unitary sphere of activity, so the phenomenal domains are connected but distinct. One may regard the whole left circle as Rawhide's adventures, with the isophenomenal taking up the majority of the sphere, while the minority "share" within the circle is all of his metaphenomenal activity-- the other circle being simply a set of metaphenomenal tropes possible for a Western comic-book character.

The next figure, however, better describes that of the Ringo Kid, if only because the metaphenomenal portion of the left circle is much smaller than it is in the first example.

More on these convolutions later.

ACTIVE SHARE, PASSIVE SHARE

In my previous essay I visualized the "geometrical approximations of the two sublimities" as a series of "fields of force,." or "domains." In both cases the sublimity-affects were determined by what sort of phenomenal universe they took place in. However, the domains relating to dynamicity did not interpenetrate. For the time being I will designate these domains as DSDs, "dynamic-sublime domains."

The dynamicities of the marvelous and the uncanny cannot manifest within the sphere of the naturalistic at all, because they depend on the alteration of one or both of the rules of causation, and anything that even resembles the tropes of the uncanny or marvelous is subsumed into the naturalistic. An example of this process is cited in this essay, where the uncanny character of PSYCHO'S Norman Bates is recast into naturalistic terms for the teleseries BATES MOTEL.

 In the sphere of the uncanny, marvelous dynamicity cannot manifest, and though naturalistic dynamicity does exist in this sphere, the dynamicity of the uncanny, given the special name "potency," overrules all naturalistic dynamicity. An example of this process is cited in this essay, wherein the only source of the uncanny is the masked vigilante the Durango Kid, whose presence dominates storylines that are in all other respects identical to those of more naturalistic "horse operas."

Finally, dynamicities of the uncanny and the naturalistic can manifest within the sphere of the marvelous, as I showed here with regard to the serial ACE DRUMMOND, where the science-fictional nature of the villain's ray-gun defines the entire narrative as marevelous, overruling the potency of the same villain's uncanny death-trap as well as the naturalistic prowess of the titular hero.

In contrast, the domains relating to the combinatory-sublime-- the CSDs-- interpenetrate quite a bit, because their form of the sublime is not physical, but symbolic. It was because of this symbolic interpenetration of the three phenomenalities that I evolved my 51 percent rule:

I term my solution to this problem the "51 Per Cent Solution."  In business dealings we're accustomed to hearing that a stockholder with 51% of a company's stocks has the greatest advantage, though not an unqualified dominion.

From the beginnings of this blog, I've frequently dealt with the problems of how narratives contain diverse elements that may conflict with one another-- not just elements of phenomenality, but also elements relating to Frye's four mythoi, genre-elements, and so on. It's impossible-- and not really desirable-- to come up with a formula that would faultlessly determine what element held "sovereignty," as Jung called it. The "51 percent rule" was my only attempt to imagine what a statistically determined rule might look like, and I applied it in only a few essays, here, here, and here.  The second essay brings up the example of the Atlas Comics character the Ringo Kid, whose series I decided not to deem metaphenomenal, given that the hero had only one encounter with a metaphenomenal antagonist. a "Doctor Saturn."

  The cinematic version of Ace Drummond also had only one metaphenomenal protagonist, but this version of Drummond-- whom I don't consider identical with the one from the 1936 comic strip-- only had one installment. Thus Ace Drummond satisfies the "51 percent rule," and the Ringo Kid doesn't.

Yet as I played around with the rule in the provisional "super-idiom list" that I mentioned in the first "51 percent" essay, I realized that even some characters who didn't satisfy the "51 percent rule" seemed important to the list. I mentioned in one essay that the protagonists of the comic strips LI'L ABNER and DICK TRACY encountered a substantial number of marvelous or uncanny presences, but that it wasn't feasible to make a statistical breakdown for strips that ran for many years.

But I could and did do a statistical survey on another Old West hero: the Rawhide Kid of Marvel Comics, the company descended from the publisher who did "Ringo Kid" in the 1950s. When I counted the number of Rawhide's purely isophenomenal adventures, and compared them with those in which he'd enjoyed encounters with metaphenomenal entities, the latter worked out to about eight percent of the total stories. So, by the "51 percent rule," Rawhide could not belong to "the superhero idiom" any more than could the Ringo Kid.

And yet, it's evident that for a time, the Kid's creators Lee and Kirby were making a significant attempt to place their combative cowpoke into superhero situations.

Sometimes he encountered crooks who simply wore uncanny outfits, like the Bat from RH #25:

In #35, he encountered a costumed crook with a literally marvelous power.

Like a fair number of Western heroes, he also encountered at least one lost civilization:

And few Marvel-readers can forget Rawhide's momentous "first contact" with an alien resembling an Indian totem pole.

The sum total of these adventures pale in comparison to Rawhide's more mundane adventures-- and yet, something's going on here that isn't going on in the RINGO KID feature. The creators-- not always Lee and Kirby, BTW-- are making substantial use of metaphenomenal elements, so they make up an important, if subordinate, part of Rawhide's fictional mythos.  The "51 percent rule," while helpful as a guiding principle, is too rigid to deal with this loosey-goosey approach to phenomenal integrity.

So, by dint of reading a few posts on shareholder rules, I've happily come across a definition that solves my cowboy conundrum, on this site:

The minority investment can be either minority passive interest or minority active interest. Passive means that the company does not have material influence on the company in which it has this minority interest. Active means that the company is in a position to influence the company in which it has minority interest.

Thus, from the strict view of the "51 percent rule," both Ringo and Rawhide are "minority shareholders" in the realm of the metaphenomenal. However, to extend the above distinction into the realm of literature, Ringo Kid's adventures display only a "minority passive interest" in matters metaphenomenal, while Rawhide Kid's display a "minority active interest"-- that is, Rawhide's encounters with metaphenomenal presences remain a vital part of his mythos, even if they're not numerically superior to all the naturalistic exploits.

This metaphor also solves my above-referenced problem as to how I should rate long-running strips like LI'L ABNER. It have enough fantastic content to satisfy the 51 percent rule, or it may not-- but certainly a strip that produces such weird entities as "Evil-Eye Fleegle" and "the Schmoos" has at least a "minority active interest" in matters metaphenomenal.

GEOMETRIC APPROXIMATIONS OF THE TWO SUBLIMITES

As one of my intermittent attempts to better illustrate the complexity of my theory of the two sublimities, I decided to explore some visual comparisons.

In the March essay WITH ENFOLDED HANDS, I compared the three phenomenalities to the three distinct parts of a seed. Though I still like this image, I have to admit that it doesn't capture the way all of these abstractions interact in the world of finished artworks. I noted in that essay that even in a work as devoted to loopy fantasy as Carroll's ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, some references to coherence still had to exist for the story to make sense. Thus the Cheshire Cat may take his leave of Alice in a fantastic manner, but when the feline fades out, it still serves the same narrative purpose as if he simply got up and walked away.

Thus I turn to the pleasures of geometry, and find more satisfaction in describing the three phenomenalities as three interlocking circles.

Each of the circles should be seen as representing not a distinct section of physical matter, as is the case with the seed, but rather a non-physical "field of force." Because there are no true physical boundaries between the three phenomenal domains, it may be easier to imagine each of them having limited influences over the other than would be the case with my earlier seed-metaphor.

In this 2014 essay I described the workings of the combinatory-sublime according to the two principles of causality, "intelligibility" and "regularity" (later superseded by a better term, "coherence," which I've edited into this passage):

...the combinatory-sublime arises rather from the transgression upon the reader's expectations in terms of intelligibility and causal coherence. DIRTY HARRY, a naturalistic work which conforms to general expectations regarding intelligibility and coherence, has its own proper level of mythicity but is not likely to inspire a high level of the combinatory-sublime because of said conformity. ENTER THE DRAGON conforms to expectations regarding coherence but not intelligibility; being "anti-intelligible," it has a higher potential to arouse the combinatory-sublime. And STAR WARS, which violates both intelligibility and coherence, has the greatest mythicity of the three in reality, as well as the greatest potential for symbolic combinations and thus for the combinatory-sublime.

This geometrical arrangement approximates the way the phenomenalities evolve from one another. Had I found on the Net an image of three rings that were both interlocked and surmounting one another, that would have hewed closer to my conceptual premise. But this one works tolerably well. The red ring is the naturalistic phenomenality, representing adherence to both coherence and intelligibility. The blue ring, only indirectly tied to the Region of the Red, flouts both coherence and intelligibility. The interceding green ring takes one principle from each of its neighbors: abiding by the principle of causal coherence like Region Red, but transgressing the principle of intelligibility like Region Blue. (If I cared about exact parallels, Region Red ought to be Region Yellow, and the parallel would be stronger-- but it doesn't exactly weigh heavily in my scales.)

Thus, for the sublimity of the combinatory. But what about the dynamic-sublime, to which I've devoted much more space on this blog?

Here's the geometrical visual on the sublimity of power:

My reason for choosing concentric circles is because each "field of force," and the sublimity it represents, registers as independent of the other two, perhaps more like three planetary orbits rather than interlocked rings. I established this principle in SUBLIMITY VS. MYTHICITY PT. 3:

As far as the film DIRTY HARRY is concerned, there is no being more powerful than Harry Callahan, though some of his foes, particularly Scorpio, are capable of challenging the hero.  The same holds true for Lee and his foe Han in ENTER THE DRAGON, and for Luke Skywalker and his opponent Darth Vader in the first three STAR WARS films. 

To pursue the orbit-simile, Dirty Harry's "planet" is one that obeys all the laws of a naturalistic cosmos, so that's why his type of power elicits the *admiration* of the audience.

The "planet" of DRAGON's Lee, however, allows for a transgression of the law of intelligibility. This doesn't precisely give Lee more physical power than Dirty Harry, but the flouting of intelligibility means that Lee *seems like* he possesses a greater *potency,* as defined here in a three-part essay series beginning here. This quality of anti-intelligible potency gives rise to the audience's *fascination.*

And finally, Luke Skywalker exists on a "planet" that allows for the transgression of both intelligibility and causal coherence. This doesn't necessary mean that every protagonist in a marvelous phenomenality necessarily has powers that transgress coherence, just because Skywalker does: obviously Indiana Jones does not have such powers. But he too exists in phenomenal worlds wherein such powers are possible. Thus, when a non-powered hero like Indiana Jones triumphs over, say, a Thuggee priest who can rip peoples' hearts out of their chests, Jones acquires roughly the same aspect of the "dynamic-sublime" as Luke Skywalker-- and both characters elicit the audience's *wonder* (also sometimes called *exaltation* in various essays here).

However, this aspect is only "real" on the "planets" of the marvelous phenomenality, because it is a narrative, rather than a significant, value. Both Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker have no power, or even potency, within the narrative worlds of Lee and Harry Callahan, because these are worlds where causal coherence cannot be transgressed.

I'm strongly considering adding yet another specialized term to my already overburdened lit-crit continuum: "domains." The word would connote all of the above-described fields of force, whether they pertain to combinatory values or dynamicity values. In the near future I'll probably experiment with it in a planned follow-up to UNCANNY CITY.  But what will be the use of it, at least over the long haul, is more than I can say.