GOLDEN AGENCY PT. 1

 Let's see if I can get in one last new analytical term before the year ends...

I was musing on the concept of dynamis in the literary sense that Northrop Frye promoted it, or at least as I extrapolated that usage within my own Frye-influenced system. In essays like 2012's STATURE REQUIREMENTS, I focused most on the notion that dynamis, which Frye defined as a "power of action," applied specifically to the differing ways in which characters in different literary mythoi have their power of action determined by their respective mythoi. Here's my breakdown of the mythoi according to the protagonists' power of action:

Adventure-heroes always win, or at least lose so rarely that most audiences take no account of the losses.  Ironic heroes rarely win, and when they do, the victories mean nothing.  Dramatic heroes occasionally win but they go through such pathos-inducing straits that they don't get much of a thrill out of it.  What's left for the comic heroes?

Comic heroes, whether they are as powerful as Ranma Saotome or as bumbling as Johnny Thunder, tend to win out, though they tend to do so less by superlative skill than by dumb luck.  Ranma usually displays superlative fighting-skills, and he does win most of his assorted battles with other comedic kung-fu opponents, but the emphasis is clearly upon finding ways to amuse the audience by undercutting the hero's triumph with silly pratfalls, comic embarrassments and the like.  Thus his stature within his mythos exists to be a vehicle not for thrills but for the jubilative mood of the *incognitio,* the comic incongruity-- which, in Ranma's series, often takes the form of his transforming from a young guy to a big-breasted young girl.

 Anyone who reads that essay now should observe that back then I was floating my first use of the term "stature" to describe how the characters compared with one another. in terms of their mythoi-associations, which I would later bring into line with Ovid's famous formulation in 2018's THE FOUR AGES OF DYNAMIS. But I didn't utilize stature in this sense more than a few more times. In 2019's SUBS AND COES PT. 1, I tipped my hat goodbye to the old usage of that term. Then I began using both "stature" and "charisma" exclusively to describe the forms of authorial will as they manifest in superordinate ("starring") icons and in subordinate ("supporting") icons, and so those terms became completely associated with my concepts of centricity.

At one point, while loosely associating my current concept of "mythos-dynamis" to the concepts of stature and charisma, I made the correlation: "dynamis is agency," though that proved to be something of an oversimplification. "Agency," for one thing, has only one major connotation in contemporary criticism; when a critic uses the term, he or she means that a given fictional icon is empowered in comparison to some less empowered fictional icon. Since this is a determination a critic can only make by comparing icons within one or more narratives, "empowerment-agency" qualifies as what Frye called a **narrative value,** a value that relates only to relationships "from inside" a narrative. In contrast, "mythos-dynamis" was purely a **significant value,** a value perceived by a reader who examines an entire work as a whole in order to discern patterns in the work, which means looking at the work "from outside," as it were.

 I found myself then revising the current concept of agency to serve a wider purpose, to distinguish what separates a superordinate icon possessed of both stature and charisma from a subordinate icon possessed only of charisma. I've been writing about my concept of centricity since the early days of this blog, and though I feel I know it when I see it, it's been hard to describe it except through concrete examples.

Therefore from this post on, "agency" will be used to describe interordination comparisons, which will be seen to possess both narrative and significant values.

In 2018's KNIGHTS OF COMBAT AND CENTRICITY PT. 1, I agreed with Nancy Springer that the central hero of Walter Scott's IVANHOE was not the novel's most "charismatic" character. For Springer, the lack of charisma (in the ordinary sense of the word) was enough reason for her to disallow Ivanhoe as being anything more than a "common thread" who united a bunch of more interesting characters. But I believe Springer was treating her concept of "real heroism" in a **narrative-value** sense. To her, Ivanhoe was not interesting in comparison to other characters, so she did not deem him t he "real hero." I argued that Ivanhoe being the "common thread" was exactly what did make him the main character. This form of agency would be a **significant value,** because the interpreter is looking at the entire design of the work "from outside" in order to decide which icon (or group of icons) gets the most narrative emphasis, regardless as to how interesting the icon may be compared to other characters in the story.

The same principle applies to many modern fictional characters who had far less colorful lives than that of Ivanhoe. Willy Loman of Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN has no "agency" in a narrative sense, and in fact he exists to be a failure as a salesman and as a father. But this is still agency with respect to the principle of centricity, because Loman is the focus of the author's will to depict a dire and depressing outcome.

Now, how can agency also be a **narrative value?** I return to the example of Ivanhoe. I've mentioned earlier that Scott's novel is an example of a stature-crossover, in that the centric character, whose base level of stature is boosted thanks to the literary fame of the book, crosses paths with the legendary character of Robin Hood. This is a *narrative value** because Robin Hood's legend is of importance within the story as well as holding significance to the readers of the story. Even though Robin Hood functions as a Sub in comparison to Ivanhoe's Prime, the bandit of Sherwood has a special level of agency because his legend possesses an irreducible (and qualitative) stature. This means that by analyzing the relations of the characters within the narrative, IVANHOE qualifies as what I termed a HIGH STATURE CROSSOVER in this essay. 

A similar analysis of intra-narrative factors may lead the critic to determine how the vectors of agency function in other interordinate relationships, and so other crossovers may be also by low-stature, high-charisma, or low-charisma, as detailed in the essays of the CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS essay-series.

More to come in Part 2.