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	glyphicality as narrative gary e. davis	March 23, 2026

Not that textuality is glyphical, in the traditional sense (graphicality of the sign), rather that a glyph may be insightfully understood generally as text. The textuality which is intrinsic to literary craft can be mapped into other forms of creative craft importantly (but I’ll dwell with that generalizing theme later). Presence of text may, through invocation, express a manifold tropality which is phenomenal: literally discernible sign (tropally phenomenographic), authorially enstanced (phenomenogenic trace in narrativity), and potentially generative by reading (invoked presencing, which is phenomenological: -ogenic -ography). Presencing of text is done through invoked authorship, a dynamic phenomeno- logos, just as classical logos was originally about communicative action. I know that’s probably an obscure assertion (set of themes), but pre-linguistic phenomenality was always about experience, not abstracted representation as general kind of category: phenomenon. Phenomenality as such is a creature of linguistic representation (and formal capability for abstraction, the so-called “formal-operational” stage of mental development in adolescence, educated into analytical efficacy): a tree as phenomenon, word apart from expression as linguistic phenomenon. Articulation abstracts from its pre-reflective immersion in experience (interal Flow). Being-with, being-in is the genesis articulable as immanently, immedi- ately retrospective, self-reflective, already (before reflection) anticipatory responding to the appeal of further experiencing (futural), retrospectively (arti- culated) giving meaningful presence sententially, which can be parsed into [a] what sentence or thing pre-sent gave [b] appeal (referentce and value) as if from itself: appellant presence of “genetic” presencing “of” the meaningful sentence. Text is here read. Being simply as sign is an abstraction. The phenomenality of text is invoked—though the immanently immediate meaning may show itself before finding significance (prior to valuable entailing, implying, or/and appealing valuably). Meaning is integral to simply there being text. To whom does the meaning of a sentence belong? (A sentence is less than an assertion: a person uses sentences—writes, speaks—to make assertions, such that a speech-act analyst may ask: What assertion was the employed locution used for?) Certainly, given lexical sense is instrumental for every read sentence, thanks to reader literacy. Also, sentential meaning belongs to the reader, thanks to linguistic competence, interest in reading, and background dispositions. But a narrator’s meaning of the present text (written, enstanced by the absent author) is wholly inferred by reading. The text is literally silent, but automatically invoked. The evident intent of the narrative is regarded as the narrator’s. Is that only the writer’s intent construed by reading? Is the evident intent of the narrating partly reader mirroring? Has the reader brought sufficient background to read accurately? And common difference between [a] narrator’s meaning (showing as reader-inferred authorship) and [b] author’s meaning (possibly character-formative as narrator) is more inferential (doubly displaced) than the inferred narrator’s meaning (“written” by reading). So, a reader wanting to understand the singularity of an author may face a complex challenge of “finding” (creating) that across narratives within a single work. Or the named author may be doing such different authorships across separate works that the named author for them all can seem to be a fiction. That’s common for literary writers, and not uncommon with academic work across genres (e.g., scientific vs. opinionated texts by the same author) and between exclusive special topics by the same author (philosophical vs. literary texts; epistemic philosophy vs. ethical philosophy by the same author). Nevertheless, belief in singularity to be found is canonical: being “Whitman”ian, “Shakespear- ian,” “Nabokovian,” or “Kantian,” etc. All of that is about what’s valid beyond the text, but literary textuality intimates a converse condition by intending fabulation. Literary interest in virtual reality— normal for fictional intent—arose long before the technologization of what’s “virtual.” Fabulation is ancient. Though reader fabulation may be implicated by questioning the “real” referentiality of any text, intended fabulation (virtuality) is integral to literary craft. Also for literary craft, the authorship may be designed by the author to be independent of the author’s world. That is, a reader’s confidence that there’s no difference between the inferred presence of the authorship and presence of the author is implicitly fictional, intended by the author. (Nabokov liked that.) The authorship which is inferrable by reading isn’t a window into the author’s world, but the reader may presume that the easily inferred intent of the authorship is simply the author’s intent. An implicit mystery of the difference between authorship and author may be overt for the author (and irresolvable), but concealed for the reader accepting the narrative candor as author-itative. (Is autobiography a kind of fiction?) So, to say that “literature exploits [the] exraordinary power of words to go on signifying in the total absence of any phenomenal referent” (refs.2.13 p. 16) is understatement.

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