SUBCATEGORICAL IMPAIRMENTS

Just a quick note updating my assertions in SUBCATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES...

When I introduced the notion of "sub-" versions of the four mythoi, I was attempting to account for some of the irregularities that might seem to keep this or that work from fitting properly within a designated category.

In so doing I was, consciously or otherwise, following the paradigm created by Northrop Frye in ANATOMY OF CRITICISM.  In order to subsume a variety of works under his four categories of romance, tragedy, comedy and irony, Frye discusses each of these ritually-related categories in terms of its "phases."  As noted elsewhere, Frye conceived his categories as part of a seasonally-patterned cyclical activity, so for him there was no contradiction in seeing that the ritually-related category of comedy might have different phases, though all of those phases remained indisputably comic in essence.

Parenthetically, I've always wondered whether or not Frye was influenced in this conceit by William Butler Yeats' 1925 book A VISION, which had (as I remember from my college reading) a similar occupation with "phases" of consciousness.  But despite the fact that I used a quote by Yeats for my very first post here, I confess I haven't even looked at A VISION since college.


While I didn't have anything against Frye's phases, they didn't sing to me as did many other aspects of ANATOMY.  I thought it made more sense to speak of the irregularities in the four mythoi in terms of the way the way the "significant values" characteristic of a given mythos assumed either a "dominant" or "submissive" position in the narrative.

However, I never found myself using "sub-agonistic" or any of the others, so that in itself suggests that they weren't as useful as I had hoped.  These days I tend to characterize mythos-irregularities as arising from the ways in which the *dynamis* of plot or character may conflict.  An example of this system appears in the essay RISING AND FALLING STARS:

All works of "pure adventure" (in which both plot and character clearly evoke adventurous *dynamis*

Works in which the plot alone conveys the adventurous *dynamis* and overrides the character-*dynamis*, which belongs to another mythos

Works in which the characters alone convey the adventurous *dynamis* and override the plot-*dynamis*, which belongs to another mythos

Based on that contemporary preference, I'm sending "sub-agonistic," "sub-pathetic" and their kindred to the boneyard of unworkable terms.

As noted in STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: THE COMBATIVE, however, I may keep the distinction of "combative" and "subcombative," because it addresses a quality of narrative that is related to neither plot nor character, but to that element that Aristotle called "spectacle."

The employment of said terms, of course, requires a separate essay.
 

STATE(MENT) OF THE UNIFICATION THEORY

As with many blogs mine starts with the desire to set down assorted thoughts and/or ideas. My primary reason for doing so is to keep them in an easily-accessible form, though of course I’m open for comment as well.

My basic posture is what has been called a “myth critic” or “archetypal critic.” I subscribe to the idea that literature in all its modes and media-manifestations is essentially homologous in form (if not function) with archaic myth/ folklore. There are differences that can be explored as well, but I find the similarities to be of greater importance.

Most of the essays and articles that I’ve had published in assorted magazines have concerned popular media like films and comic books. This blog can in theory allow me to deal with pretty much any sort of fictional narrative, whether deemed “high” or “low” by the more repressive representatives of academia. (Whether I actually will or not remains to be seen.)

One of the themes I hope to explore is what I call “mythic complexity,” which I derive from an almost-offhand statement made by Northrop Frye, often considered the ancestor of all literary theories that stress literature’s continuity with myth:

“Archetypes are associative clusters, and differ from signs in being complex variables.”—ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, p. 102

At this point I won’t go into talking about what Frye calls “signs,” which is a term he loosely derived from early writings on semiology. The essential thought here is that there is a hierarchy between simple and complex manifestations of the units of communication—whatever one chooses to call them—that make up a narrative. Frye doesn’t go into great depth in terms of using “complex variables” as a means of evaluating how well a narrative communicates, but it’s a centerpiece of my theory. Often, in the critique of popular artforms, I have seen any number of complex symbolic formations show up in narratives that are, on the surface, apparently simple, as are most of the myth-stories in the handed-down forms that we have them. This appearance of the complex within the apparently-simple convinces me that even these variables that we call “archetypes” have a propensity to generate themselves, at times without the conscious intent of the author. The poet William Butler Years, commenting on the poetry of Blake, said:

“It is the charm of mythic narrative that it cannot tell one thing without telling a hundred others. The symbols are an endless inter-marrying family. They give life to what, stated in general terms, appears only a cold truism, by hinting how the apparent simplicity of the statement is due to an artificial isolation of a fragment, which, in its natural place, is connected with all the infinity of truths by living fibres.”

Most stories in the popular vein also appear at a glance to sustain themselves on mere truisms: good conquers evil, etc. And there are some stories that offer little beyond truisms, as they are made up of nothing more than (so to speak) “simple variables.” But for others the apparent truisms are window-dressing for more important matters of myth and symbol, and to proving that theory I dedicate this blog.