NARRATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT AMPLITUDE PT. 2

Though this post continues some of the thoughts from Part 1, I was tempted to title it something like "Narrative and Significant Dominance in the Two Modes." But that would've been more work to type.

The essential theme of AMPLITUDE PART 1 was to re-examine once more the principles by which I established my literary reading of the economic idea of "active and passive shares." However, though that essay was done in October 2018, its general principles were stated in June 2017 in the short essay EXCESSIVE COMBINATORY FORCE:

So I have at least made the essential statement that for the combinatory mode as for the dynamicity-mode, "excess of strength is proof of strength," as Nietzsche aptly said.

Now, in AMPLITUDE I cited two completed serial runs, using the Silver Age RAWHIDE KID as an example of a work with an "active share" with respect to the combinatory mode, and the 1960s LOST IN SPACE as an example of a work with a "passive share" with respect to the dynamicity mode. Generally speaking, I've aligned the two modes in line with the "narrative" and "significant" values outlined by Northrop Frye. The combinatory mode aligns with "significant values," since only the reader, the audience who interprets a work's significance, can suss out the dominant phenomenality of a work or group of works. The dynamicity-mode aligns with "narrative values," since such values are tied in with the internal values of the story, in this case being whether or not the characters do or do not wield exceptional levels of power in order to produce the narrative.

For that reason, I stated that even though only about nine percent of all RAWHIDE KID stories had metaphenomenal elements, the ones that did have such elements assumed a "value of significance" in the series," Conversely, though there were 23 percent of the LOST IN SPACE stories that boasted scenes of combative dynamicity, I argued that these scenes had a nugatory "value of significance" according to the series' tendency to assert a more pervasive "value of significance" that did not support the combative mode.

What it essentially comes down to is: does a particular aspect of storytelling play a vital role in the story, or series of stories, or is it less than vital?

If the role of this aspect has a strong amplitude, either with respect to narrative or significant values, then it is dominant. If the role of this aspect has a weak amplitude, with respect to either value, then it is, to revive an earlier term, "subdominant."

Some examples may be forthcoming in future.