ARCHETYPE AND ARTIFICE PT. 2

At the end of PART 1 I stated that I would investigate a particular archetypal trope, that of the "birth-mystery plot," across the three phenomenalities of the NUM theory. The two examples more or less introduced by Frye in the earlier quoted section from his ANATOMY were Oliver Twist (my selection of a Dickens "mystery orphan") and Ion (from the Euripides play of the same name). Within the domain of "the uncanny," the most famous example of this trope is almost inevitably Tarzan. whose origin-tale may be more widely known than that of the other two.

I'll backtrack here just enough to reference my 2013 statement here as how the uncanny differs from the purely naturalistic, both in terms of the principle of "strangeness" and in terms of a potential for combinatory power:

What Todorov fails to comprehend here is that the "quite rational explanations" in USHER do not dispel the sense of something bizarre taking place, as is seen when the "statue" in WINTER'S TALE seems, ever so briefly, to have come to life.  The slight nods to possible rational explanations in USHER do not the banish the strangeness of the House, with its face-like facade, its doomed occupants and its cataclysmic descent into the tarn.  This is the common element of all of my ten uncanny-tropes.  In each case the uncanny-author plays a game that resembles the game of the advocate of naturalism, in that he does not violate causality.  But he does so not to reify "the real," as Todorov suggests.  He does so to create a "supra-real world," one in which there is a far greater potential for combinatory sublimity than in any naturalistic work. 

Now, in PART 1 I made a brief comparison between the narrative strategies of Oliver's creator and the dramatist of ION:

the author [Dickens] will seek to emphasize that, say, Oliver Twist is the product of an unjust social system, rather than the obvious spawn of either a fiction-writer or of any mythological entities that might stand in for the author. (Again following Frye's example, the god Apollo exists to "explain" the provenance of his mortal son Ion, in more or less parallel fashion to the sacrificed giant whose death "explains" the origins of the universe.)

Now, the caveat must be made that Euripides did not "invent" Ion as the other two invented their respective characters. Nevertheless, an author who follows the basic outlines of a traditional myth-tale about a traditional character tacitly accepts the phenomenality implied in that material, and anyone who attempts to produce a mythology out of whole cloth, as Tolkien did, is likely to pursue roughly the same narrative strategies as the archaic authors, as far as how the gods function with relation both to mortals and to godly kindred.

Again I return to the definition I formulated of the three phenomenalities in response to my reading of Roy Bhaskar: 

In the NATURALISTIC category, all phenomena are both "coherent" and "intelligible."
In the UNCANNY category, all phenomena are "coherent" in that they do not exceed the cognitive//physical nature of causality, but some phenomena are not "intelligible" given that they may prove unintelligible by the standards of the NATURALISTIC.
In the MARVELOUS category, some phenomena may be neither "coherent" nor "intelligible."

(Note:my current term "coherent" substitutes for the discontinued one "regular.")

Everything in Oliver Twist's world is both coherent and intelligible, just as certain things in Ion's world are neither coherent nor intelligible. In the world that Burroughs created for Tarzan, however, he pursues some of the same goals as the naturalistic author as described in Part 1:

an author's focus upon verisimilitude means that he automatically seeks to limit the potential "affective freedom" of his work, in favor of a "cognitive restraint" based in his audience's acceptance of the rules of consensual reality. 

But Tarzan is not strictly intelligible as is Oliver Twist. I'm not speaking of incidents in the first book that strain credulity, like the ape-man teaching himself to read, because Burroughs wants his readers to believe that this miracle falls within the bounds of naturalistic possibility. Rather, it's that the author allows his character an "affective freedom" that exceeds the type of affectivity normally possible for characters in naturalistic worlds. Burroughs isn't being literal when he styles Tarzan a "forest god," but the impression of godhood is conveyed by the hero's strength, which on one hand is entirely human in its scope, and yet on the other hand has been developed to an extent most men never experience, including jungle-dwelling tribesmen who haven't been raised by apes.

Marvelous works by their nature must privilege the world of literary artifice, whether they are creating a whole world of marvelous things (Tolkien again) or just one marvelous thing in an otherwise natural-seeming world (Verne, and, in a narrative sense, Euripides). Naturalistic works privilege the perceptions, by the author and his culture, as to the restrictions of verisimilitude. The uncanny author utilizes strategies from both domains. Poe in Todorov's example of "House of Usher" allows his reader to pursue a naturalistic interpretation if he really wants it, but the author doesn't buttress that interpretation with assorted facts about the tendency of houses to sink into tarns at the least provocation.

In Part 3, I'll get back to the matter of how archetypes and artifice go together.

TAKING STOCK OF 2014

In the early years of this blog I didn't trouble much about "first posts of each year." But I did so at the beginning of 2014, so I might as well ring in the new year in the same manner.

From my admittedly biased POV, 2014 was an important year in filling in some important elements of my literary theory.  If my "big discovery" of 2013 was my slow determination was that Kant's "dynamic sublime" did not adequately explain all aspects of the fictional sublime, a.k.a. "the sense of wonder," then for 2014 it was my chance exposure to Roy Bhaskar's work on scientific phenomenology. As described in this essay, Bhaskar's work proved helpful in guiding me away from the influence of C.S. Lewis and his persuasive but ultimately unrewarding meditation on probability. In the same essay I suggested a new refinement for the methods by which the phenomenalities of "the uncanny" and "the marvelous" appeal to the wonder-seeking audience.

Now I would rephrase [the above] 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.

Now, 2015 may bring even further refinements. But if I'm correct in thinking that Bhaskar's terminology has provided me with a firmer ground for the NUM theory that I ever derived from Lewis, Cassirer, or Todorov, then the question arises: is there an efficient way to communicate the theory of the combinatory-sublime to the actual seekers of wonder, the readers of horror, fantasy and science fiction?

That it represents my own responses to the joys of metaphenomenal art goes without saying. But the proof of the theory is, at least partially, to be found in practice.  I would expect that some readers of metaphenomenal literature would be somewhat more approachable to analyzing their responses in philosophical terms. They might not be up on all the Burke and Kant stuff, but a simple essay dealing with what makes marvelous images appealing-- something along the lines of COMPENSATION CONSIDERATIONS PT. 3-- might be one avenue of approach to the more bookish of the book-readers.

As for fans of fantasy-movies or fantasy-comics-- I have a feeling such analytical ruminations would not be to their taste. Whenever I've put forth feelers on such subjects on forums devoted to popular media, I almost get the feeling that these fantasy-fans have allowed their dominant culture to define the metaphenomenal experience for them, as with, "I know it's fantasy, but I like it anyway." Unfortunately this admission can lead anti-fantasists to accuse said fans of practicing simple "negative compensation," which I've attempted to refute here repeatedly.

It may be that one of my impending projects for 2015 may yield a better forum for these insights than one among a thousand blogs.  We shall see.

STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: CAUSAL COHERENCE

In Part 1 of THE INTELLIGIBILITY QUOTIENT I wrote:

My reading of Bhaskar's REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE led me to advocate a bifurcated conception of fictive causality, characterized by "regularity" and "intelligibility."

I used these two terms because Bhaskar had used them. However, every time I invoke the former term-- speaking, for instance, of "the regularity aspect of fictive causality"-- I find the term awkward.   I'm sure that part of my discomfort stems from certain risible associations with the word "regularity." In addition, the word doesn't seem to take in what I mean when I speak of how "the marvelous" intrudes upon the ordered world of normal causation.

I recalled a phrase from Northrop Frye's ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, in which he asserts that literary criticism should mirror the physical sciences in making "an assumption of total coherence." In science, this coherence implies that every physical law impacts upon and coheres with every other physical law. In science's domain at present, there are no fields of space where, as Lovecraft put it, the laws can be different than they are in the fields we know; no obtuse angles that can suddenly behave as if they were really acute.

So my solution to my discomfort is that from now on everything I denotes as "regularity" will be termed "causal coherence" in the labels and just plain "coherence" in text. The label differentiation is meant to distinguish it from my use of the term "coherence" as an indicator of a particular type of critical merit, as I explained in TERMINOLOGICAL TRACKDOWN PT. 1. 

 I articulated the concept in response to Susanne Langer’s useful distinction between “discursive symbolism” and “presentational symbolism” in her 1942 book PHILOSOPHY IN A NEW KEY. Langer did not say anything about judging particular literary manifestations of these two forms of symbolism.  In contrast, I wanted to expound on ways in which these very different symbolic discourses could be used competently or not so competently.

Over the years since I first descanted on matters Langerian, though, I've hardly ever used "coherence" in this manner: to describe the qualitiative merit of a work's use of either "discursive" or "presentational" symbolism. So this becomes another term that is not incorrect, just inadequate for continued use. I will now speak of the "coherence aspect of causality" because the word "coherence" better describes what happens in a reader's consciousness when he sees a supposedly coherent world violated by the phenomenality of the marvelous; that is, when a world that seems in some ways like our own becomes at least partially incoherent by the presence of a numinous-seeming situation, object or presence, be it the entire fantasy-mythos of Tolkien or the "one gimme" of Jules Verne's Nautilus.

Therefore my "bifurcated conception of fictive causality" from now on will be characterized by two aspects, "coherence" and "intelligibility." For the three phenomenalities these terms sort out the same way the old ones did:

NATURALISTIC-- fictive causality is both coherent and intelligible
UNCANNY-- fictive causality is coherent but not entirely intelligible
MARVELOUS-- fictive causality is neither entirely coherent nor entirely intelligible

OUT WITH THE OLD "PROBABILITY," IN WITH THE NEW "INTELLIGIBILITY"

In April 2013, I formulated the concept of the "combinatory-sublime," defined here as a sense of wonder born from the "endless combinations" one may find in fiction, a phrase I derived from a statement in Tolkien's ON FAIRY STORIES.  Unfortunately, though Professor Tolkien has remained a true guide in these matters, I was not as well guided by his colleague Professor Lewis.  All of the TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I essays, as well as the follow-up SUBLIMITY VS. MYTHICITY PT. 3, were written when I was attempting to explain the distinctions between the three phenomenalities in terms of comments made by Lewis-- and by Aristotle-- on the nature of "probability" and "possibility." I have rejected these terms now, for reasons I won't repeat, but I find it necessary to re-examine certain of those essays with the new concept of "intelligibility" in mind.

For instance, I observed in the last-cited essay that the "combinatory-sublime" was a "significant value" corresponding to the "narrative value" of a given work's mythicity.  The narrative value of mythicity denotes the density and complexity of the mythic symbols in the work; the significant value of the combinatory-sublime speaks to the reader's reaction to this density and complexity.

Parts of the SUBLIMITY essay are still unblemished by my later formulations, as when I examined the mythicity present in three franchises of each respective phenomenality:

DIRTY HARRY-- symbolizes the psychology of the (fictional) Old West, reborn in a modern urban environment
ENTER THE DRAGON-- symbolizes the psychology of the peerless martial artist, whose power lies not only in physical strength but also in his ability to "see" the weaknesses of his enemies
STAR WARS-- symbolizes the psychology of the archetypal orphan-hero, seeking to prove himself in a cruel world and finding his strength in opposition to a father (and a grandfather) archetype

But the next paragraph unfortunately tries to define the effects of the combinatory-sublime in terms of what the reader may think to be probable and/or possible:

 On the level of the narrative value, all of these myth-functions are equal.  HOWEVER-- the potential of myth-combination is inevitably limited in Dirty Harry's world, since a naturalistic world always values verisimilitude over myth's improbabilities.  Works in an uncanny world have more leeway to be improbable, and thus greater combinatory power-- while marvelous works, able to present various levels of "the impossible," can present more combinations of elements than either.  Thus it seems demonstrable that because mythic/symbolic aspects are so highly referential in nature, this principle skews more toward the significant value of the "combinatory sublime," toward calling attention to the difference between the dancers and the dance.

Now I would rephrase this 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.

Now, I add "potential" because one can only assert abstract matters such as mythicity in purely logical terms, not in terms of statistical analysis. Suppose that in place of three 1970s action-films by different authors, I substitute three plays with the same separate phenomenalities from the same author:

HAMLET (1599-1601)= "uncanny"
KING LEAR (1605-06)= "naturalistic"
MACBETH (1606)= "marvelous"

Just as no one can prove via statistics that any of these well-regarded is factually "better" than one another, no one can prove that the mythicity of one is "better" than the other. However, it can be argued logically that Shakespeare's mythicity is highly dependent on his frequent references to myth, religion and folklore, even within a naturalistic context like that of KING LEAR. Therefore even when a given work does not violate intelligibility and regularity, its principal if not exclusive means of gaining mythicity stems from making reference to mythico-religious beliefs, which are dominantly based upon the violation of intelligibility and regularity. It is for this reason that I state that works of the marvelous possess the greatest potential for the combinatory-sublime, not because I believe that every actual work of the marvelous possesses superior mythicity to the works of the other two phenomenalities.

CAUSAL CONUNDRUMS AGAIN

I've finished another book that I started back in December: Roy Bhaskar's A REALIST THEORY OF SCIENCE, first mentioned here.  I'm not going to devote anything like the extensive coverage I gave to Edward Skidelsky's book, however.  Bhaskar's book started out well, but quickly became repetitious and devoted to Wittengenstein-like logic-chopping.  The most interesting section is this one:

Regularity determinism must be straightaway distinguished from two
other forms of determinism: which may be called 'ubiquity'
determinism and 'intelligibility" determinism. Ubiquity determinism
asserts that every event has *a* real *cause*; intelligibility
determinism that every event has *an* intelligible *cause*; regularity
determinism that the same (type of) event has the same (type of)
*cause*. The concepts of 'cause' involved in the three determinisms
are of course distinct. For the ubiquity determinist the *cause is
that thing, material or agent that is productive of an effect*; for
the intelligibility determinist it is simply that which renders an
event intelligible to men; for the regularity determinist
it is the total set of conditions that regularly proceeds or
accompanies an event.-- Bhaskar, ARTOS, p. 70.



It occurred to me that given how often I talk about "causality" with respect to the NUM formula, as I do in this essay, I might experiment by comparing Bhaskar's distinctions about the "concepts of cause" to the nature of causality in my Cassirer-indebted schema.

The most obvious disconnect is that I'm interested in a schema that takes in all of the "symbolic forms," while Bhaskar is interested only in a theory of science.  Further, as I noted here Bhaskar cites three philosophical approaches to science and allocates each of the "determinisms" above to one of the three.  But Bhaskar's three approaches are irrelevant to parallels to Cassirer's opposition of causality and efficacy, which I've also identified as the split between the *cognitive* and the *affective."

With such a comparison in mind, both "ubiquity determinism" and "regularity determinism" seem like two closely related statements about the nature of "real causes," which means that they could be subsumed under Aquinas' definition of the cognitive: "how we know the world." By contrast, "intelligibility determinism" makes a statement regarding humankind's perception of "real causes," which may be subsumed under Aquinas' definition of the affective: "how we understand the world." In so saying I assert that the conviction that all things should prove intelligible is an affective, not a cognitive, state of mind, which may well be at odds with Bhaskar's intention.

In this essay I attempted to reconfigure my older cognitive/affective schema with one more aligned to Cassirer's concepts:

NATURALISTIC-- cognitivity and affectivity are defined by the causal order; i.e. "one definite cause yields one definite effect"

UNCANNY-- cognitivity is defined by the causal order, but affectivity exceeds causal order and participates in the multicausal nature of "efficacy"

MARVELOUS-- both cognitivity and affectivity exceed the causal order and participate in the multicausal nature of "efficacy"

But as I said above, this configuration doesn't adequately define causality.

I hypothesize, then, that causality within the sphere of human art is reducible to two interrelated aspects: that of regularity (cognitive) and intelligibility (affective).  With that in mind, then:

In the NATURALISTIC category, all phenomena are both "regular" and "intelligible."

In the UNCANNY category, all phenomena are "regular" in that they do not exceed the cognitive//physical nature of causality, but some phenomena are not "intelligible" given that they may prove unintelligible by the standards of the NATURALISTIC.

In the MARVELOUS category, some phenomena may be neither "regular" nor "intelligible."

This breakdown would allow for both of the following definitions of fantasy to be true.  The first speaks primarily of causality's cognitive aspect:

“The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday reality.”—Roger Caillois, AU COEUR DU FANTASTIQUE.

While this one challenges causality's affective aspect:

“The fantastic in literature doesn’t exist as a challenge to what is probable, but only there where it can be increased to a challenge of reason itself: the fantastic in literature consists, when all has been said, essentially in showing the world as opaque, as inaccessible to reason on principle.”-- Lars Gustaffson, cited in Franz Rottensteiner's THE FANTASY BOOK.

I also note that Cassirer, in his comparison between the discursive mode of theoretical reason and the expressive mode of myth, essentially takes aim against the "regularity" aspect of causality:

Whereas empirical thinking is essentially directed toward establishing an unequivocal relation between specific "causes" and specific effects, mythical thinking, even where it raises the question of origins as such, has a free selection of causes at its disposal... Mythical "metamorphosis"... is always the record of an individual event-- a change from one individual and concrete material form to another. The cosmos is fished out of the depths of the sea or molded from a tortoise; the earth is shaped from the body of a great beast or from a lotus blossom floating on the water; the sun is made from a stone, men from rocks or trees."-- Cassirer, MYTHICAL THINKING, p. 46-47.

And, a couple of pages later, he contrasts them on the principle I call intelligibility:

Here again it is not the concept of causality as such but the specific form of causal explanation which underlies the difference and contrast between the two spiritual worlds [of theoretical reason and myth]... Science is content if it succeeds in apprehending the individual event in space and time as a special instance of a general law... The mythical consciousness, on the other hand, applies its "why" precisely to the particular and the unique.  It "explains" the individual event by postulating individual acts of the will."

It's worth noting, too, that a page later Cassirer emphasizes that for myth-consciousness "all the forces of nature are... nothing other than expressions of a demonic or divine will."

Thus, when I experience "strangeness" in either an uncanny or marvelous work of art, I am feeling myself divorced by its violation of either the "regularity" or "intelligibility" aspects of causal law.