Debating and Extending “Covert Progression” and Dual Dynamics: Rejoinders to Scholars

Abstract

Let me begin by thanking John V. Knapp for inviting me to write the target essay and thanking John and Dr. Maxwell Hoover for inviting other scholars to respond to it. I'm also very grateful to the sixteen scholars from nine different countries who have accepted the invitation, some of whom are old and new friends and some I've never met.1 Their insightful comments, mild or severe challenges, and important extensions have all helped to clarify the picture of the “covert progression” and “dual narrative dynamics.” I would like to start with the response from JOHN PIER, who, with his extensive knowledge, well positions my approach in relation to other approaches. John offers a very fine discussion of the features of my rhetorical narratology and its connection with James Phelan's, and an insightful comparison of our rhetorical approach with two nonrhetorical approaches, the latter functioning to set off the characteristics of the rhetorical investigation of the single and dual narrative progression. This paves the way for his discussion of the relation between my rhetorical narratology and Umberto Eco's theory of interpretation. Eco's theory sets store by the contrast between a “naïve” reader's first linear “semantic” reading and the subsequent “critical” or “meta” reading in relation to the Model Reader. Given the duck/rabbit figure, the first-time reader thinks he's reading about a rabbit only to discover it's not a rabbit, but something else, and he's not sure what. Then the Meta Reader's rereading, which forms a reinterpretation (a “metanarrative”) of the first-reader's misreading (a “narrative”), would yield the interpretation that both figures are represented and that the larger message is a meta-one about perception. In John's view, “metanarrative seems to point to a space, implicit in dual narrative dynamics, that calls for further investigation” (Pier, “Rhetorical” 33). In order to have a metanarrative (a subsequent interpretation of an earlier interpretation), we must have a naïve reader's first reading. This can only take place in the interpretation of the plot. Concerning this narrative movement, in the first reading, one may merely pay attention to the surface story facts, and it is only in the subsequent readings that one tries to get at the deeper meanings. Even if during a subsequent reading one explains how he is duped by the surface meaning in the first reading (thus, we'll have a “metanarrative” pitted against a “narrative,” both readings being “inscribed within the textual strategy”), this does not seem to amount to an “extension” of interpretation. As for the covert progression, its very discovery/existence requires reading the text critically, and the naïve reader's superficial reading cannot come into play. We need to bear in mind that the covert progression is another narrative movement hidden behind the plot development; when it comes into view, it's already the result of effective critical readings, hence leaving no room for the contrast between a naïve first reading and a subsequent “metanarrative.” That is to say, I'm hard put to extend the interpretation of the dual dynamics with Eco's theory, and this difficulty points to the fundamental difference between reading the plot as a single narrative movement (Eco's subsequent “meta” reading is one that goes “back through the plot step by step”) and reading the dual dynamics as two separate parallel narrative movements. But I do appreciate John's clear exposition of the essential similarity and difference between the rhetorical and the semiotic approaches. The second response to which I'd like to reply comes from JAMES PHELAN, who offers an admirable summary of the gist of my theory of dual dynamics. His excellent summary is more or less expected since, as pointed out by John Pier, my “dual” progression is very much an extension of his theory of “single” progression. Jim also raises a series of important questions, which offer a golden opportunity for me to clarify the picture. Jim's first question is whether we have dual or single authorial agents. In my articles “What Is the Implied Author?” (Style, 45.1 [Spring 2011]: 80–98) and “Implied Author, Authorial Audience, and Context” (Narrative, 21.2 [Summer, 2013]: 140–58), I've made clear that the “implied author” is no other than the person in the process of writing this particular narrative, and the “real author” is the person in daily life, outside the writing process.2 That is to say, for any single-authored narrative, in terms of the encoding process, we only have one implied author/“agent.” And this is what I've put down in the target essay: “in a narrative with dual dynamics, the implied author [the single agent] tends to [only when the two narrative movements are contrastive or opposed to each other] adopt two contrastive or even opposed stances in creating the two parallel narrative movements. Consequently, instead of inviting readers to infer one image of the implied author (shortened as IA), the text invites readers to infer two contrastive or even opposed images (such as antiracist versus racist) [of that single writer/agent] from the two narrative movements” (Shen, “‘Covert’” 22). It should be clear that my answer to Jim's question “But isn't there an agent who constructs the two tracks of movement, and an audience who recognizes that agent and their dual-track communications?” (Phelan, “Theorizing” 38) can only be “Yes” since the issue of there being “two agents” in a single-authored narrative is beyond my consideration. The reason for my setting store by the different authorial stances and different authorial reading positions in a narrative constructed by one implied author and read by one reader such as James Phelan or Dan Shen is that this is a previously neglected area. Because of the neglect, previous critics have put Bierce's “A Horseman in the Sky” on a par with his “The Affair at Coulter's Notch,” treating the two narratives as having the same authorial stance, but actually, they share the same authorial stance only in terms of being anti-war, but in terms of a soldier's performing his duty, the authorial stances in the two narratives are drastically different, a difference perceivable only when we open our eyes to contrastive authorial stances and contrastive authorial reading positions in a narrative with such dual dynamics.Another question by Jim is: Why not “[reserve] ‘overt/covert’ for cases of double-coding and using some other distinction such as ‘primary/secondary’ or ‘dominant/subordinate’ for cases of juxtaposition?” (Phelan, “Theorizing” 39). Well, in “A Horseman in the Sky,” the two narrative movements are equally substantial, but previous critics have only paid attention to the plot development, neglecting the other no less substantial narrative movement because it is “covert” in the Aristotelian tradition focusing on the plot. As spelled out by H. Porter Abbott, “readers miss [the ‘covert progression’] not because it's hidden but largely because their interpretive equipment won't allow them to see what is right there in plain sight” (“Review” 560). As pointed out by Jim, in Kafka's “The Judgment” and Mansfield's “Revelations,” the most significant triggers for the covert progression either take up a significant portion of the textual space or are “right there in plain sight,” but previous critics have still either overlooked them or have only tried to fit them in the plot development. Significantly, the “covertness” is primarily related to authorial design in light of the Aristotelian focus on the overt plot. As mentioned in the target essay, previous critics have only paid attention to the plot development in Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart”; Mansfield's “The Fly” and “Revelations”; and Kafka's “The Judgment,” and because of that focus, they have overlooked the “second” and “third” narrative movements that are hidden/“covert” in the Aristotelian tradition.The fact that these narrative movements behind the plot have eluded critical attention for at least one-hundred years testifies to their being “covert.” Moreover, because of the linear nature of verbal narrative (one word after another), one narrative movement is expected to be more easily noticeable. And so even in the future when the creation of dual narrative dynamics becomes a commonly practiced and well-known narrative strategy, most probably one narrative movement would be more covert than the other—the author may have to present one narrative movement as the more overt that is readily perceivable during the first reading and the other more dependent on the reader's inference during later readings. To see the issue from a different angle, in a large portion of the narratives I've analyzed, words often simultaneously generate two contrastive kinds of thematic significance, and because of the limitation of human perception, we can only first perceive the more obvious kind, and then infer the more covert kind in later readings.In terms of Jim's insightful distinction between the dual dynamics in narratives like those just mentioned and narratives with “rhetorical passing,” my discussion of dual dynamics plays slightly different roles. In terms of rhetorical passing, which has been discussed or touched upon by Peter Rabinowitz and Susan Lanser, my argument of dual dynamics only serves to direct more attention to it, so that we can discover such subtle rhetorical passing as in Mansfield's “Psychology.” As for the other category to which most of the narratives discussed in the target essay pertain, my argument functions to direct attention to a previously neglected phenomenon. No matter which category is involved, we invariably have in such works a “covert” narrative movement behind the “overt” plot development, and the primary function of my theory of dual dynamics is always to direct attention to the covert behind the overt and their relation.3Another question concerns “Parallelism or Synthesis.” Jim asks, “why not conclude that the singular IA crafts the two movements to interact so that they ultimately produce a single, albeit complex, progression?” (Phelan, “Theorizing” 39). For the former part of the question, I've already made clear that it is “the singular IA [who] crafts the two movements.” In a narrative with only the plot development, the implied author has only designed one narrative movement, possibly with “different branches or layers” (Shen, “‘Covert’” 1) which would “interact” to “produce a single, albeit complex, progression.” By contrast, in a narrative with “dual dynamics,” the implied author has designed two separate, parallel progressions, each with its distinctive thematic orientation, no matter whether in a complementary or subversive relation.In Mansfield's “The Fly,” although the plot development and the covert progression harmoniously complement each other, the plot development is highly symbolic, concerned with big issues such as war, death, victimization, existence, memory, and so on, and the covert progression is nonsymbolic, only conveying ethical irony against the vanity and self-importance of the boss as an individual. The two parallel narrative movements remain from the beginning to the ending of the narrative as two separate narrative movements, each functioning on its own. But since they are in the same one authorial design of the narrative, they would together contribute to the total significance of the work. As regards Bierce's “A Horseman in the Sky,” the plot development and the covert progression move along two incompatible thematic trajectories, which cannot be synthesized into a “single progression” but which do join forces or “complement” each other in contributing to the total thematic significance, albeit always in a mutually contradicting and counterpointing relation, and always portraying contrastive images of the protagonists. If we turn to the subversive category, the covert progression, when coming to light, would overturn the plot development as a false appearance, and in the authorial design of such a narrative, the dual dynamics need to remain as two parallel narrative movements for the subversion to function (more or less implicitly) from the beginning to the ending of the narrative.Jim's last question is: Are covert progressions “authorially designed or readerly constructed”? He has singled out Chopin's “Désirée's Baby” for a test. The issue is whether the racist covert progression I've revealed is designed by Chopin in the encoding process or constructed by myself during the reading process. Jim rightly points out that the (truly Black) slave owner Armand is “immersed in racist ideology” (Phelan, 40) but in this narrative all white slave owners are invariably and completely free from the influence of that “racist ideology” although they are in the same racial situations. Désirée's foster father, the white slave owner of another plantation, does not hesitate to adopt Désirée with the obscure origin, and when she is mistaken for being colored, her foster parents not only offer her their home but also claim her to be their own daughter. By contrast, the Black Armand spurns both his wife and his son for their Black blood. In the overt plot, we see Armand's racial discrimination as being representative of that of white slave owners in general. In the covert progression, however, we discern the continued contrast between Armand and all the white characters, the latter being totally free of racial discrimination. If we examine Chopin's textual choices carefully, we'll discover that the covert progression conveys this picture: If Armand were a little bit like the kind and nondiscriminating white characters or if he himself had a little less of the satanic spirit, Désirée and her baby would have survived (see my detailed analysis in my book Style and Rhetoric 70–84).Jim finds recalcitrance to the racist covert progression in two aspects. First, Chopin depicts “Black characters who are not discriminatory toward other Black people,” including Armand's Black mother's adoration of her Black son (Phelan, “Theorizing” 41). Well, as we all know, “racial discrimination” means discriminatory behavior of one race toward members of another race. So, it is natural that we find no racial discrimination between the Black mother and her own Black son, nor among other Black characters because they belong to the same race (Armand discriminates against the “colored” Désirée only because he believes himself to be white). It is true that Chopin depicts the yellow nurse's change in attitude toward Désirée and her baby when she discovers that the baby is colored. But this is a change from being respectful toward superior white masters to having no respect for persons she believes are of her own inferior race. In the covert progression, we see the contrast between the colored nurse's change in attitude and the white slave owners' constant feelings toward Désirée in the same racial situation. This unbelievable picture of white slave owners' being invariably and completely free of racial discrimination is indisputably designed by Chopin for the purpose of implicitly mystifying Southern slavery. Another recalcitrance that Jim sees to the racist covert progression concerns “Armand's behavior toward the slaves after he falls in love with Désirée: he treats them much the way his father did” (Phelan, “Theorizing” 41). Well, the covert progression indicates that being in love with and close to the white blood enables the Black Armand to change temporarily for the better. When Armand is estranged from his white wife (now mistaken for a mulatto)—his having loosened the tie with the white blood, he again treats his Black slaves cruelly, which forms a contrast with his white father's constant benevolence toward his Black slaves.It is worth noting that Kate Chopin was a racist in daily life, and that the historical Chopin formed a sharp contrast with the historical Harriet Beecher Stowe (see Shen, Style and Rhetoric 84–85). If Uncle Tom's Cabin provides a more or less realistic picture of the cruelty of the white master toward the slaves, “Désirée's Baby” presents a picture contrary to Chopin's life experiences. While Chopin's father-in-law was a very harsh master, Désirée's is described as very benevolent toward his slaves. While Louisiana's racial caste system forbad interracial marriage by law, in “Désirée's Baby” the white master bearing “the oldest and proudest” name in Louisiana marries a Black woman (though in Paris). Significantly, “Désirée's Baby” was written at a time (November 1892) when the South's racial system had long been officially abolished and the defense of that system could only be made implicitly. Not surprisingly, the narrative has an antiracist overt plot, but behind it, there exists a racist undercurrent unobtrusively mythologizing the Southern racial system.4 Now I move on to KELLY A. MARSH, whose response focuses on the efficacy of my model of dual narrative dynamics for approaching texts that critique not only privileged women protagonists openly but also the patriarchal system implicitly. She draws a helpful distinction between two kinds of feminist texts. In one kind, the criticism of patriarchy is clearly in evidence, but in the other, the systemic or societal critique is obscured. While I've explained the obscurity—in terms of a “division of labor”—that the societal critique is only implicitly carried out in a covert progression behind the personal critique in the overt plot, Kelly illuminates how authors have kept the societal critique implicit by “construct[ing] a particular relation between negative ethical judgments and empathetic affective responses that effectively keeps the critique of patriarchy in the background” (Marsh 42–43). I find Kelly's account convincing and enlightening, which points up the necessity of having the model of dual dynamics in analyzing such texts. Without breaking free of the Aristotelian tradition focusing on the plot development and without consciously searching for the possible existence of a covert progression, critics are hard put to find the societal critique behind the overt plot that “consistently thwart[s] the authorial audience's empathy for a protagonist who draws our strongly negative ethical judgment” (Marsh 43). Kelly's discussion well shows that in texts like Mansfield's “Revelations” and Clare Boothe's play The Women (1936), it is not sufficient just to have Patrick Colm Hogan's model of “causal complexity” (see below) since “[j]udgment without empathy discourages readers from seeking the systemic causes of the protagonist's suffering” (Marsh 43), and that is why the social causes and the systemic critique have very much eluded previous critical attention. When we see the text in terms of “dual narrative dynamics” rather than just “causal complexity,” our eyes will be open not only to the hidden social causes but also to how the same textual choices simultaneously generate two contrastive kinds of thematic significance respectively targeting criticism at the female protagonists and the patriarchal society (see my illustrative analysis in the target essay and Shen, Style and Rhetoric 102–09). As for PATRICK COLM HOGAN's very kind and thought-provoking response, I need first of all clarify my basic position. He takes it that I try to “overthrow and render obsolete the entire history of narrative theory since Aristotle,” but this is not what I intend to do. As I have expressed again and again in the target essay, what I try to do is merely “extending attention from single progression to dual progression” (Shen, “‘Covert’” 2), that is, looking behind the plot development for the “covert progression” and exploring the interaction between them in those narratives that contain such “dual dynamics.”Patrick comes up with the helpful notion of “causal complexity,” which well applies to Mansfield's “Revelations” as it is a matter of unearthing the social causes underlying the female protagonist's behaviour. However, it is not fortuitous that, over the past century, the social causes in question have eluded critical attention. It points to the fact that in such a narrative, causal complexity may only be recognizable by paying attention to what I call “dual dynamics”—as well explained by Kelly Marsh. What is more, even if critics can find the social causes concerned, without going beyond the Aristotelian tradition, they won't be able to see how the same textual choices simultaneously generate contrastive or even opposite meanings along two separate trajectories of signification, let alone perceiving their simultaneously contradictory and complementary relation from the beginning to the ending of the text.As regards Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart,” I find Patrick's interpretation impressive, but it only deepens and broadens our understanding of the plot development in terms of the murderer's shame (for a discussion of the related issue of the murderer's guilt, see Shen, Style and Rhetoric 36–39). Patrick's account does not even touch on the two covert progressions of “overall dramatic irony” in the form of self-condemnation and self-conviction, respectively. This is not surprising since the two undercurrents have nothing to do with “causal complexity.” The undercurrent of “self-condemnation” rests with Poe's making the murderer the only dissembling villain throughout the narrative and finally making him condemn dissemblance as a villainous act. The covert progression of self-conviction depends on the interaction between the murderer's continuous insistence on his being sane or not mad and the “insanity debate” in that historical context.5 Precisely because Patrick's admirable discussion of “The Tell-Tale Heart” only helps with the understanding of the plot development, without touching on the two covert progressions, it illustrates the need of going beyond the Aristotelian tradition to look for covert narrative movements paralleling the plot development.In effect, in most of the narratives I have discussed, the dual dynamics don't simply yield a more inclusive understanding of causality. Rather, these narratives set up different kinds of relations between the overt plot and the covert progression. In other words and more specifically, Patrick's “causal complexity” is not applicable to Chopin's “Désirée's Baby” (where we have two story-worlds with opposed racial stances), Mansfield's “Psychology” (a man and a woman's mutual love in the plot versus the woman's unrequited love for the man in the covert progression) and “The Fly” (a symbolic plot versus a nonsymbolic covert progression), and Bierce's “A Horseman in the Sky” (a plot bitterly attacking the cruelty and inhumanity of war versus a covert progression positively conveying the paramount importance of carrying out one's duty). As regards these narratives where Patrick's “causal complexity” does not apply, if we do not go beyond the Aristotelian tradition and extend attention to the “dual dynamics,” we'll undoubtedly be left with a partial or distorted picture of the story-worlds, themes, and emotions in Patrick's formulation. Now I proceed to DANIEL CANDEL BORMANN, whose response starts with an anecdote that helps drive home the essence of “covert progression” and “dual dynamics.” Before he attended my one-hour keynote lecture at the fifth ENN conference, he only paid attention to the plot development, but after hearing my lecture, Daniel “[broke] free of the bondage” of the long critical tradition since Aristotle and opened his eyes to a covert progression. In his brilliant essay entitled “Covert Progression in Comics: A Reading of Frank Miller's 300,” he first “reads the overt plot,” and “then analyzes the covert progression,” another narrative movement not only “mimicking the overt plot, but also reinterpreting it” (abstract).However, in his response to my target essay, Daniel casts doubt on whether the undercurrent he revealed in 300 is indeed a covert progression. Interestingly, what caused his doubt is an observation I made elsewhere that the covert progression “often contains various textual details that appear peripheral or irrelevant to the themes of the plot” (Style and Rhetoric 3). There, I used the term “often” to qualify the observation, and the predicate verb is “contain”—the same covert progression can also “contain” events that are important to the plot development (see below). In my present target essay, I've also taken precautions to qualify my argument. Only after analyzing the covert progression in Mansfield's “The Fly,” I came up with Thesis Seven: “a covert progression may [or may not] reside to a significant extent in textual choices which appear peripheral or digressive to the plot development” (12, italics added). In his response, Daniel has overlooked not only the qualifications, but also the essential difference between my term “contain” (apart from what is involved, other things can also be contained) and his own substitute for my term, “consist of” (only able to contain what is involved), and so he describes covert progression in my eyes as invariably “consisting of ‘textual details that appear peripheral or irrelevant to the themes of the plot’” (“And What” 54). It is this misunderstanding that has made him worry about whether the undercurrent he discerned in 300 can qualify as a covert progression since it shares the same basic sequence of events with the plot development.To put things in perspective, let's leave aside stylistic details and focus on the sequence of events. As regards the small number of narratives discussed in the target essay, we already need to distinguish four different kinds of relation between covert progression and plot development in this aspect. First, the two parallel narrative movements share the same sequence of events, such as in Kate Chopin's “Désirée's Baby” and Bierce's “A Horseman in the Sky,” where the same story facts are made by the implied author to convey simultaneously two contrastive or opposed kinds of meaning. Second, the covert and overt progressions are based on what only seems to be the same sequence of events, such as in Mansfield's “Psychology,” where what appear to be the male protagonist's mental activities in the plot development turn out to be the female protagonist's mental activities as projected onto the man in the covert progression. Third, the two narrative movements are to a great extent based on the same sequence of events, but the covert progression also rests with some fictional facts that appear digressive to the plot, such as in Katherine Mansfield's “Revelations” and Franz Kafka's “The Judgment.” Fourth, the covert progression resides to a great extent in fictional facts that appear peripheral or digressive to the plot development, such as in Mansfield's “The Fly” and the undercurrent concerning self-condemnation in Edgar Allan Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”Miller's 300 pertains to the first kind of relation, where the same sequence of events forms the basis of both the plot development and the covert progression. Partly attributable to the bondage of the Aristotelian tradition, Daniel identifies plot development with the sequence of events. With this identification, since the covert progression in 300 shares the same event sequence with the plot, Daniel regards the covert progression as happening “‘in plot’” or as a narrative movement “where plot becomes crucial” (“And What” 54). But in my view, the covert progression, though dependent on the same sequence of events as the plot, has its own separate movement. It's for this reason that Daniel can characterize the covert progression as “reinterpreting” the plot.In his essay published in Poetics Today, Daniel well captures, in my eyes, the independence of covert progression from the plot: “Covert progression can substitute, run parallel to, or offer an alternative to the overt plot” (Candel, “Covert” 706).6 The two independent narrative movements may or may not have the “suspense-curiosity-surprise” pattern (a standard pattern in traditional plots of resolution, but unseen in modern plots of revelation, such as in Mansfield's “Revelations” and “The Fly”). In a narrative with such a pattern, if “from the beginning,” the text is “open to two options” (Daniel's words), in the Aristotelian tradition we would opt for one option and suppress the other or see a disruptive/subversive force in the middle of the plot development (as Daniel did before attending my lecture), but if we break free of the bondage of the tradition and open our eyes to a covert progression, we would at once accept both options and explore two contrastive narrative movements throughout the text (as Daniel did after the lecture).Daniel rightly points out that “the complexity of 300 cannot be gauged adequately if not through its covert progression” (“Covert” 706). His insightful exploration of the covert progression behind the plot in 300 has enabled us to see a much fuller and more balanced picture of this narrative. I greatly appreciate Daniel's successful extension of the investigation of covert progression to the graphic novel, and I much look forward to his revealing more covert progressions in narratives of this genre in the days to come. Now I come to the response from JAN ALBER, who, while acknowledging that my investigations of covert progression “undoubtedly shed new light” on the texts concerned, has raised a series of provocative questions, which offer a good opportunity for me to clarify various issues. The first issue concerns whether, in terms of the relationship between plot development and covert progression, we should give up the dichotomous distinction between complementation and subversion in favor of a scale by adding “the category of gradual or partial transformation” (Alber, “Binary” 60). Significantly, the plot development and the covert progression are two separ