STRENGTH TO DREAM, THE SEQUEL

 In the first two parts of STRENGTH TO DREAM, STRENGTH TO AWAKEN, respectively here and here, I pursued a comparison between Samuel T. Coleridge's comment about "the suspension of disbelief" and Stephen King's response to that concept. I then followed up with a third essay based on my two categories of the metaphenomenal. I applied some of my observations to King's comments in his 1981 book DANSE MACABRE, concluding that what he and Coleridge called "disbelief" was more like "disengagement." Naturally, since King only talked about the metaphenomenal in general terms, there were no explicit comparisons between what he wrote in DANCE MACABRE and my NUM theory.

However, when I reread BATMAN #400, reviewed here, I was reminded that this very special anniversary issue included an essay by King, entitled "Why I Chose Batman." In this essay, King explains that as a comic-reading kid he far preferred Batman to Superman, and the reason he gives for that preference seems to be rooted in his personal sense of disbelief-- even though the way he frames that disbelief would seem to contradict everything he wrote in his DANSE essay. In that essay, King seems to disparage those who can't allow themselves to roll with a good fantasy-yarn:

They simply can't lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

Now, in the following segment of the 1986 essay, King seems to be endorsing a lack of imaginative muscle.

I remember the ads for the first SUPERMAN movie...the ones that said YOU'LL BELIEVE A MAN CAN FLY. Well, I didn't... But when Batman swung down into the Joker's hideout on a rope or stopped the Penguin from dropping Robin into a bucket of boiling hog-fat with a well-thrown Batarang, I believed. These were not likely things, I freely grant you that, but they were possible things.

Now, King probably did not know anything about any theories about fantasy-fiction, least of all those of Tzvetan Todorov and his theory of the uncanny, which I've refuted here numerous times. But he-- or at least his younger self-- is validating his Batman preference over Superman (though he says he did like the Man of Steel somewhat) simply because he didn't think Batman violated Young King's sense of what was possible in the real world. And nowhere in "Chose" does Older King invalidate what Young King thought about these matters, even though five years earlier he'd turned a pitying eye on audiences who couldn't place credence in Nyarlathotep, the Blind Faceless One.

Of course, everyone has blind spots, and I'm reasonably sure that King, having been asked to celebrate the Caped Crusader for an anniversary special, just reeled off his kid-memories to serve that purpose. He certainly wasn't making an aesthetic statement. However, what he said is not unique, since a lot of comics-fans have expressed a similar preference for the Bat-dude over the Super-dude. And often the criteria of these fans is similar: Batman seems possible, Superman impossible. 

Of course, in fiction nothing is impossible; readers only make that judgment if they are of the belief that fiction MUST reflect the reality of everyday experience. Years ago I played around with the idea that I might define the marvelous and the uncanny in terms of probability. But as I recall, I abandoned this notion, because I don't think fiction must reflect everyday experience, and indeed, fiction is attractive specifically because it is not tied to external reality, the reality of "one cause=one effect." Some people don't want fiction to indulge in impossibilities, and that's their prerogative, but by King's own 1981 standards, their disengagement from overt fantasies might be deemed a sign of imaginative underdevelopment.

Lastly, just to pick at King's analysis on one more point, I don't know exactly what Batman comics he read. But I don't think that there was ever a time when Batman didn't have substantial encounters with marvelous, "impossible" phenomena. King cites examples of bizarre criminals that in themselves conform to the domain of the uncanny. Since he was born in 1947, he wouldn't have seen the hero's contentions with vampires or mad scientists who change people into destructive giants. But if he was reading comics in the 1950s, then he certainly would have seen Batman contending with super-crooks who used freeze-rays and force-fields, even if he King made it a point not to buy any of the "Batman vs. aliens" entries.

On a side-note, King's essay also mentions in passing the same-year success of Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. In 1986, this only meant a new validation for Batman after years of being deemed the Number Two DC hero after the company's Kryptonian mascot. But neither King nor anyone else could have guessed how sweeping the influence of Miller, and after him Tim Burton, would prove, so that today, more often than not, the Gotham Guardian gets top billing over the Metropolis Marvel. And so King's essay seems slightly prescient, even if I don't think people prefer Batman for exactly the same reasons he specified. 

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.

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.

RIDDLE, MYSTERY, ENIGMA

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...-- Winston Churchill (or maybe his speech-writer(s), BBC broadcast, 1939.

The primary definitions of Churchill's three metaphors for Russia from Dictionary.com are as follows:

RIDDLE: "a question or statement so framed as to exercise one's ingenuity in answering it or discovering its meaning; conundrum."

MYSTERY: "anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown."

ENIGMA: "a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation."

Macmillan Online has the following:

RIDDLE:  " a question that seems impossible or silly but has a clever or funny answer"

MYSTERY: " something that you are not able to understand, explain, or get information about"

ENIGMA: "someone or something that is mysterious and difficult to understand"


With infinite time and patience I could probably list out all cited definitions to these three overlapping yet different words.  But even if I did so, and determined that there is a statistically dominant definition for each, I don't think those statistically-arrived-at definitions would cancel out my conviction that Churchill's three words have a particular function in that speech about Russia.  In short, in order to make his point about the unfathomability of Russia, Churchill chooses three words that all connote unfathomability in increasingly greater degrees.  And this becomes important to my theory of literary causality in that each of the three phenomenalities the degree of intelligibility becomes greater.  

Just as a "riddle" is a perplexing arrangement of words that does (as Macmillan says) does finally have some rational or quasi-rational answer, the domain of the naturalistic is one in which all objects and situations, however perplexing they may be at a given time, are ultimately intelligible to reason.

A "mystery," as both cited definitions note, does not automatically have an answer-- which might mean that the majority of the ratiocinative works generally called "mysteries" perhaps ought to have been called "riddles," since almost all of them have answers of some sort.  The two cited definitions place an emphasis on the attempt of a subject to gain knowledge or information that is hard of access.  There is no guarantee, as with a literal riddle, that the mystery will be unveiled, though I would argue that this does not mean it cannot be.  Further, not all mysteries are revealed as plays upon rational understanding, since one also finds the word used for the set of initiation ceremonies known as the Eleusianian Mysteries.

Of the two cited definitions for "enigma," I believe that Macmillan's is essentially identical to its definition for "mystery," so I disagree with it. Dictionary.com's suits me more in that it suggests that the "occurrence or situation" referenced may be not just temporarily unknowable, but may be permanently "puzzling or inexplicable."

Now, the best way to show how this eventuates in the world of literature is to focus on how intelligibility is reflected in the narrative function of "the anomaly."  Once again, I draw upon the definition supplied by academic Frank Cioffi:

This reality [of a traditional narrative] is disrupted by some anomaly or change--invasion, invention, or atmospheric disturbance, for example--and most of the story involves combating or otherwise dealing with this disruption.

Unlike Cioffi-- who does note that anomalies can stem from such mundane factors "such as family, the love ethic, manly heroism, the American Way, and the like"-- I link the nature of the anomaly to its function within a bifurcated causality, one comprised of both a regularity aspect and an intelligibility aspect.  In recent essays I've given copious examples as to how narratives conform to, bend, or break with the regularity aspect, but the "riddle, mystery, enigma" progression suggests to me a way to provide a structure for the differing degrees of intelligibility. 

In this essay, I attempted to assess to employ an argument about "degrees of probability" the same way I now advocate "degrees of intelligibility." I don't dismiss the arguments re: evidential probability, but they are not as useful as I had hoped to catch the affective distinctions between the three phenomenalities.  But the examples I provided work just as well for this current argument:

Sticking only with the Doyle stories this time:

THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS is a naturalistic RIDDLE. The conspiracy Holmes unmasks is one that is fully intelligible to reason, and once the answer is known, it has no further repercussions.

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES is an uncanny MYSTERY. In the earlier essay I argued then, and still argue, that "the explanation of the Hound via the rules of ordinary causality, while it serves a valid narrative purpose, does not dismiss the affective sense of strangeness from the narrative."

THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN is a marvelous ENIGMA, because the anomaly around which the plot is structured is something outside the rules of "causality's regularity aspect," i.e., "a special drug that can somehow transfer the attributes of an animal to a man."  This level of intelligibility is enigmatic and insoluble specifically because the author must introduce some "fudge factor" that allows him to justify the appearance and/or behavior of the anomaly. 


I should note that the sheer number of "fudge factors" is irrelevant to the degree of enigmatic intelligibility.  It's quite true that Jules Verne did not need to provide as many "fudge-factors" in justifying the existence of his imagined submarine as H.G. Wells did in justifying the existence of gravity-nullifying Cavorite in FIRST MEN IN THE MOON-- nor does it matter, contrary to Verne's opinion, that in real life human beings could and did create real submarines, while no one has come close to synthesizing anything like Cavorite.  Both devices are equally marvelous, and equally enigmatic, within the sphere of the fictional universe their authors create.

I should also note that in some narratives it's possible that an uncanny or marvelous situation or entity may appear as a "throwaway," rather than being as central to the narrative as Cioffi's anomalies are. In this essay I reviewed two films in which marvelous occurrences or entities appear within the scope of comparatively mundane storylines.  But I tend to think that even when an uncanny or marvelous item intrudes upon a naturalistic framework in this marginal manner, they still transfer their qualities to the whole, as much as if they were central to the narrative.

STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: THE THREE PROBABILITIES

The wonders of Google allow me to quickly search out the places where I used the term "coherent improbabilities," here, here, here, and here.  All of these terminological usages are now, though not entirely irrelevant, have been superseded, as are any mentions of "incoherent improbabilities."

The linked ideas of coherence and incoherence, which I introduced here in my essays on Susanne Langer, now strike me as immaterial to the subject of probability in fiction.  I've mentioned that the degree of personal conviction that an audience-member brings to a work is highly personal, and so the matters of coherence and incoherence properly belong to the domain of the intersubjective. I have not used them in any organized way to apply to the phenomenalities of the NUM formula, though I'm aware of having tossed a few indications in that direction, which, had I elaborated them, would have come out to something like:

NATURALISTIC-- "incoherent improbability"
UNCANNY-- "coherent improbability"
MARVELOUS-- "impossibility"

This was a mistake, for manifestations of coherence and incoherence appear in all three phenomenalities.  For instance, I've mentioned that many comedy films toss out "impossible" occurences for the sake of humor, but that they are not "marvelous" because the impossible elements are not meant to be taken seriously.  An easy example of an unserious impossibility is the "automatic pilot" joke in AIRPLANE, who comes to life and smiles for a moment or two for the sake of a joke anyone reading this blog ought to know.

However, I do continue to believe, as stated in PROBABILITY SHIFTS, that each phenomenality is determined by the nature of probability:

All three phenomenalities-- naturalistic, uncanny, and marvelous-- are established by the ways in which the authors of works in each division choose to present "evidence" for the nature of their worlds.  For a critic like Tzvetan Todorov, this means establishing whether or not a "fantastic" event is "real" or "unreal."  But as I've demonstrated in my formulation of the NUM theory, even the most 'realistic' narrative merely reproduces gestures suggestive of a reality dominated by causality.

My very next sentence, however, privileges an association of the naturalistic with probability itself:

I've also noted that within this context, everything is by definition "probable," and any narrative element suggestive of improbability is "incoherent."

Were I writing this now, I would eliminate the second half of the sentence and would specify that everything in a naturalistic continuum is by definition "probable in respect to a rigid cognitive/affective causality."  The breakdowns I've mentioned in respect to the cognitive'affective spheres in the three phenomenalities, cited here, remain unaltered.


However, in that essay, I attempted for the first time to schematize the nature of the sublime in each phenomenality with terms "devised...to reflect the causality-relationship of each phenomenality."  Thus:

In NATURALISTIC works the affect of sublimity was ISO-REAL.

In UNCANNY works the affect of sublimity was SUPRA-REAL.

In MARVELOUS works the affect of sublimity was ANTI-REAL.

I believe that I was following C.S. Lewis' lead, attempting to see "probability" as something determined by its socially determined degree within a given context.  Yet, as I noted in Part II of THE TWO VERISIMILITUDES, Lewis is not especially concerned with defining probability in terms of causal reality, while I am, drawing in part on Cassirer, Caillois, and Tolkien.

Since I have clearly stated that the affect of sublimity is different in each phenomenality because of "the causality-relationship of each phenomenality," it now seems obvious to me that the nature of probability is also affected by the relationship of the causal boundaries and the sublimities by which those boundaries are broken.

Therefore, probability too breaks down the same way as the sublime: "ISO-REAL" for the naturalistic, "SUPRA-REAL" for the uncanny, and "ANTI-REAL" for the marvelous. 

Some specific examples of the different intersections of probability and sublimity seems called for.  I'll be drawing on my examples from TEN DYNAMIC DEMONS, since that's one of the essays in which I invoked the now untenable, Aristotle-derived association of "the impossible and improbable."

PROBABILITY SHIFTS

I've invoked the term "probability" with reference to its place in the critical works of Aristotle and C.S. Lewis, but I should certainly make clear what I mean when I invoke the word.

I confess that I have no interest in any philosophical studies that invoke mathematics-- not because I don't like mathematics, but because I don't think the discipline correlates adequately with the discipline of human art. Additionally, as I pointed out in this essay, no fictional narrative-- which is the only form of art with which I concern myself on this blog-- is bound by physical law in the way that reality is: hence, I formed the notion that each of my phenomenalities has its own unique, gestural relationship to causal reality.

Various online essays, one of which is this Wikipedia entry, cite two major divisions in the interpretation of probability.  One is what is called variously "physical" or "frequentist" probability

Physical probabilities... are associated with random physical systems such as roulette wheels, rolling dice and radioactive atoms. In such systems, a given type of event (such as the dice yielding a six) tends to occur at a persistent rate, or "relative frequency", in a long run of trials. Physical probabilities either explain, or are invoked to explain, these stable frequencies.

This form can in no way relate to my use of literary probability, or the uses seen in Aristotle or Lewis, because nothing within a literary continuum has real physical properties.

The other main type, "evidential probability," shows more potential for literary application.

Evidential probability... can be assigned to any statement whatsoever, even when no random process is involved, as a way to represent its subjective plausibility, or the degree to which the statement is supported by the available evidence. On most accounts, evidential probabilities are considered to be degrees of belief, defined in terms of dispositions to gamble at certain odds.

All three phenomenalities-- naturalistic, uncanny, and marvelous-- are established by the ways in which the authors of works in each division choose to present "evidence" for the nature of their worlds.  For a critic like Tzvetan Todorov, this means establishing whether or not a "fantastic" event is "real" or "unreal."  But as I've demonstrated in my formulation of the NUM theory, even the most 'realistic' narrative merely reproduces gestures suggestive of a reality dominated by causality.  I've also noted that within this context, everything is by definition "probable," and any narrative element suggestive of improbability is "incoherent."


The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes usually deals with this sort of naturalistic probability.  The majority of his prose adventures solve "atypical" mysteries by revealing new perspectives proving them to be the results of "typical" influences.  This would be characteristic of a Conan Doyle story like "The Five Orange Pips," or, to cite a non-Doyle work, the 1939 film ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. I noted in my review of this film that one character in the film's narrative "comes very close to edging the film into the phenomenality of the uncanny."  Yet because the viewer always knows that it's merely a human assassin manipulated by Moriarty, the film must offer a purely causal explanation for the killer's method of killing.

Todorov's work THE FANTASTIC argues that much of what I can "the uncanny" also falls into the domain of "the real" if an apparent fantasy-creature is revealed to be a falsehood that is far from immune to causal reality, as with Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles."  In contrast, I argue that the note of "irreducible strangeness" in an uncanny work like "Hound" divorces it from the type of reality favored in "The Five Orange Pips." Thus the explanation of the Hound via the rules of ordinary causality, while it serves a valid narrative purpose, does not dismiss the affective sense of strangeness from the narrative.  This dynamic holds true even when one is dealing not with a deception but simply a strange sort of menace, like an insane serial murderer, such as one sees in another non-Doyle Sherlock film, A STUDY IN TERROR.

Finally, though Holmes did not often encounter the genuinely marvelous in the Doyle mythos, this 1923 story verges into the arena of science fiction, in that Holmes encounters a special drug that can somehow transfer the attributes of an animal to a man.  In non-Doyle films, this phenomenality would be best represented by the 2009 SHERLOCK HOLMES film.  Oddly, though this film begins by suggesting the existence of marvelous supernatural powers-- usually verboten in a Holmes story-- it can only "explain" this marvel by resorting to another marvel: an electrical projection-device.

Probability in literature, then, depends entirely upon the nature of the evidence mustered by the author.  It's my general finding that even works that attempt to vacillate between the depiction of two phenomenalities in the same narrative tend to favor one over the other, as I asserted in my review of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH.

THE TWO VERISIMILITUDES PART II

In Part I, I said:

Lewis does not reference concepts of causality. I've interpolated these, drawing on influences ranging from Cassirer to Roger Caillois to Tolkien. Lewis is purely concerned with what is acceptable as "realistic" in social terms.

By way of substantiating this assertion, here's the definition Lewis advances for his formulation, "realism of content:" "A fiction is realistic in content when it is probable or 'true to life.'"

This bears a degree of resemblance to what I have said of narratives with a naturalistic phenomenality; that they conform to the base level of causality and that everything that would seem to strain the laws of causality is dismissed as some form of "incoherent improbability."  I'm more concerned than Lewis with the dialectics of causality because I feel it offers a more dependable criterion for "realism" than what a given generation of readers believes to be "true to life." In TWO SUBLIMITIES HAVE I-- PART 5  I said:

In all naturalistic works, both improbability and impossibility can only be sources of incoherence...

At the same time, when I was first defining the three phenomenalities I noted here:

Nonfictional narrative is always about the typical; fictional narrative is always about the atypical.

I made this pattern of the "anomaly" more explicit in this essay:

The anomaly may be any number of things within the scope of the Num Formula: a ruthless criminal (naturalistic), a bizarre psycho-killer (uncanny), or a blood-hungry vampire (marvelous). As different as these three examples are in terms of phenomenality-- with one appealing to what I've called the "odd-sublime," the other two to the "strange-sublime"-- they are identical in terms of function in terms of how the plot-dynamicity works out.

Although I came to use the term "atypicality" only for the naturalistic sphere, I find that Lewis' idea of "content" includes any sort of anomaly in any phenomenality.  As I noted in Part 1, and as Lewis himself confirms, he selects many of his examples of "realism of presentation" from "stories which are not themselves 'realistic' in the sense of being probable or even possible."  I mentioned just one of these examples, taken from BEOWULF, but there's also one taken from the entirely naturalistic HENRY V.

Throughout the essay Lewis makes clear that he also believes that fiction needs the element of what is "atypical" in order to make it more expressive and/or affecting.  Of another naturalistic work, GREAT EXPECTATIONS, Lewis writes:

It is extremely unlikely that a poor boy should be suddenly enriched by an anonymous benefactor who later turns out to be a convict.

Having admitted that many such tropes are improbable, Lewis examines the claims of those critics who feel that all fiction should be "true to life, and then rejects the idea that probability is ever uppermost in the minds of those seeking to be entertained.

For those who tell the story and those (including ourselves) who receive it are not thinking about any such generality as human life. Attention is fixed on something concrete and individual; on more than ordinary terror, splendour, wonder, pity, or absurdity of a particular case. 

Shortly after this passage, Lewis puts forth the centrality of "hypothetical probability":

The hypothetical probability is brought in to make the strange events more fully imaginable.

And though the essay goes on longer on the topic of "escapism," Lewis essentially finishes up his discussion of the two realisms by concluding that, "The demand that all literature should have realism of content cannot be maintained... But there is a quite different demand which we can properly make; not that all books should be realistic in content, but that every book should have as much of this realism as it pretends to have."

I find it interesting that in this essay Lewis lumps together all forms of improbability and impossibilty-- ranging from the main plot of GREAT EXPECTATIONS (naturalistic) to Homer's claim that his heroes can lift huge stones that "no two modern men" could move (uncanny) to "the bad luck of Oedipus" (marvelous, in that it invokes god-given prophecies and at least one literal monster).  Yet in his essay from THE PROBLEM OF PAIN, first referenced here, Lewis systematized the affects of 'fear, dread, and awe" that are somewhat intermingled in the Rudolf Otto work from which Lewis derives those terms.  In this essay I described three positive affects to complement the three negative affects supplied by Otto and Lewis, and I anticipate that I will be able to invoke these in my further explorations of the nature of "improbability" in the three phenomenalities.