It's widely stated that of the usual "parts of language"-- declarative, interrogative, imperative or exclamatory-- propositions are filed under the heading of declarations. This means that the speaker is declaring his statement to have "truth-value," whether he's saying "it looks like it's going to rain" or "Sequence X of LI'L ABNER is better than Sequence Y."
This was necessary because I later stated the equivocal relationship of literary declarations to the truth of experiential reality.
Disgustin' Yokum using his unearthly ugliness to turn Wild Bill Hickup into a stone statue and Li'l Abner letting the Slobbovians legally change him into a female are equally strong propositions, in terms of the reader's engagements with them-- though obviously, neither story-structure possesses any "truth-value" for reality as such.
In the play-religion of the Discordians, their Principia Discordia asserts that the worshipers of the Goddess Eris do not have dogmas, but "catmas," which are defined by the felicitous phrase "relative meta-beliefs." Be this as it may for the Discordians, literature has always been about "relative meta-beliefs," as per my earlier citation of Sir Philip Sidney. Much later, Northrop Frye would speak of a "protecting wall of play" that insured that the reader's investment in stories was less than 100%.
That said, some "relative meta-beliefs" are better justified than others. That's why I borrowed Susanne Langer's term "consummation." I don't think that Al Capp consciously planned out the themes I find in his stories, but I find the ones in "D. Yokum's Visit" to be consummately worked out on the symbolic level. In contrast, in the subsequent storyline, only the sequence directly pertaining to General Bullmoose, his son and the lady wrestler Tara Legoff rises to a high level of symbolic density. Partisans of gender politics would probably decry a perceived reactionary attitude in the sections pertaining to Li'l Abner dressing up like a girl, because at no time does he embrace his "feminine side." For me, though, the sections misfire because they don't really play with any of the symbolic qualities of being male, female, or even something in between. Even worse is a section that takes place merely to delay Abner's return to Dopatch for a few more weeks. He gets trapped on New York's "Floogle Street" by a curse from Evil-Eye Fleegle, and Mammy Yokum has to intervene to disperse the curse. This could have been a cool sequence all by itself had Capp chosen to use it as more than a gimmick to keep his narrative pot boiling, but such are the vagaries of deadline creativity.
FTR (if any), the way in which the "Bullmoose" sequence retains its symbolic integrity despite being part of a greater whole is comparable to the way a given story in a greater continuity may be set apart from that continuity, as I considered when I analyzed "The God Killer" separate from Don McGregor's rambling "Panther's Rage" narrative.
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