Before preceding to the discussion of the new category "eminence," which will connote "the organizational power of centric icons," I'll touch on another line of thought about centricity, though one that, unlike the resonance formulation, won't need to be discarded.
The 2020 essay EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL, PART 1 was my first attempt to apply Whitehead's concept of vectors to my Schopenhauer-influenced concept of authorial will, going back to 2009's SEVEN WAYS FROM SCHOPENHAUER. The definition I cited for "vectors" is worth repeating.
A quantity that has magnitude and direction and that is commonly represented by a directional line segment whose length represents the magnitude and whose orientation in space represents the direction.
"Magnitude and direction" are still applicable in my system, but it's worth reiterating that, in contrast to the discrete forces we know from physics, these are vectors of the author's intentionality-- often conscious intention, sometimes subconscious as well. The author gives his centric icon or icons the magnitude and direction that makes its/their vector superordinate to those qualities in other icons. But he does so because the proposition he most wants to advance can best be organized around one icon rather than any of the others.
I use the phrase "the proposition he most wants to advance" in keeping with my previous observations that a given work may advance many propositions as easily as one. In short narratives, there's usually only room for one proposition. However, longer works can incorporate a wide variety of propositions. In MYSTERY OF THE MASTER THREAD PART 2, my main example was Melville's monolithic MOBY DICK, and I argued that the organizing proposition of the book-- what I called the "master thread," and later rechristened "the master trope"-- was that of the "myth of the Hunter and the Hunted."
I'm not sure that, prior to this essay-series, I'd ever noticed that over the course of my investigations, I had attributed an organizing principle both to the abstract propositions put forth by a fictional narrative AND to the icons within that narrative, the icons which (as I mentioned here) make possible audience-identification. However, after discarding the unhelpful concept of resonance as a metaphor for the organizing principle, I found myself turning back to the thoughts expressed in the 2013 essay JUNG AND SOVEREIGNTY.
Wherever Jung derived the term "sovereignty" from, he used in a manner apposite to my own: to suggest an organizing factor within the multiplicities of the human mind. His argument doesn't have any great relevance to literary criticism, but I did consider using his term for my principle of organization. However, the word "sovereign" suggests an uncompromising rulership, which is not quite in line with some of my literary concepts. Yet a trip to the synonym dictionary gave me "eminence," and that birthed my new term birthed my new term for all of a narrative's organizing factors, whether related to icons, propositions, or some combination thereof. It also didn't hurt the new term's appeal that Philip Wheelwright had used the term "eminent instances" in his book THE BURNING FOUNTAIN. Wheelwright's use of the phrase, appropriately derived from Melville's BILLY BUDD, is not identical to my evocation of the word here, but the base meaning still seems roughly parallel.
Lastly-- and there must be an ending, for the time being-- I prefer "eminence" to "sovereignty" because the former seems more malleable. In PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 3, I asserted that when Lois Lane stars in her own series, a "phase shift" occurs in which she and Superman reverse their respective subordinate/superordinate positions. This alteration in their respective centricities is elucidated by my formulation that Lois, a charisma-figure within SUPERMAN stories, shifts into a position of eminence while Superman's eminence recedes. This takes place for the purpose of relating propositions not possible in the SUPERMAN features-- propositions about what it might mean to be "Superman's girlfriend," which are also the sort of stories might have held particular appeal for young female readers. I added that Lois will probably always be considered "charisma-dominant" because Superman is, culturally speaking, a much more "eminent instance." But she does still have a low degree of stature thanks to having been in a position of organizational eminence.
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