SUBCATEGORIAL IMPERATIVES

In STALKING THE PERFECT TERM: AGONISTIC AND OTHERS I refined the terms I use for the significant values of the narrative myth-radicals: "agonistic" for the *agon,* "sparagmotic" for the *sparagmos,* "pathetic" for the *pathos,* and "incognitive" for my not-classically-approved *incognitio."

In AGON IN 60 SECONDS I attempted to sort out two famous narratives by Rider Haggard-- SHE and KING SOLOMON'S MINES-- with respect to how they measured in terms of their nature of conflict, using the terms "combative" for one and "subcombative" for the other. These terms have been largely superseded by the terms for the above-cited significant values, with "agonistic" taking the place of "combative."

In CONFLICT VS. COMBAT I observed that one might make place different narratives into typological perspective according to the element of combat. I showed how the element functioned in different narratives, using three examples: MEASURE FOR MEASURE for the "noncombative" (where combat either does not exist or is only implied), ROMEO AND JULIET for the "subcombative" (where combat is seen but is not the central aspect of the story) and MACBETH for the "combative," in which the element of combat is central to the story, even though the story itself may be not belong to the *mythoi* of combat, the adventure-tale.

But in a quest for greater simplicity (rare for me, at least), I've decided that some of the terminology can be elided in light of a full myth-radical system. One can certainly say that, even if MEASURE BY MEASURE has no scenes of combat, they might be implied by Shylock's use of the law to kill a hated Christian, and so "noncombative"-- or a revised verison, like "nonagonistic"--is a bit of a misnomer. The difficulty is more or less solved by simply saying that any significant value can exist in one of two configurations: a "full set," which would describe (say) MACBETH's centralized use of an agonistic value, and an "empty" or "null set," to describe those in which the use of a given value-- like the usages of the agonistic value in both MEASURE and ROMEO-- is anything less than central to the action of the plot.

Thus I find two configurations for each of the four significant values:

Agonistic/sub-agonistic
Pathetic/sub-pathetic
Sparagmotic/sub-sparagmotic
Incognitive/sub-incognitive

I'll probably never go into excrutiating detail about specific works that fall into each category. By way of general example I can see how certain melodramas might be *sub-pathetic* developments away from a "high drama" model; how certain simplistic satires might fall short of a total sparagmotic vision and thus would be merely sub-sparagmotic; how certain comedies, etc.

But since one of my theoretical projects is to better define the *mythos* of adventure, about which so little of critical value has been written, I'll be frank in saying that my main reason for forming the subcategories has been to suss out how one adventure fiction, such as Haggard's SHE, can display a less agonistic value in its narrative than another narrative, KING SOLOMON'S MINES, despite the facts that both works share the same author and many narrative plot-devices, and both works belong to a lit-mythic category I call "adventure"-- which is the way many more casual readers label them as well.

I may address some of these categories in a forthcoming essay relating to a Paradigm of Literary Genetics.