I guess what I would define as the opposite of reductionist
literary criticism is the sort that tries to see why the
whole is greater than its parts.

==Dan

At 11:49 PM 7/23/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Daniel Pearlman wrote:
>
>> I am afraid I do not agree with Carrol that all types of literary
>> criticism are in effect reductionist.  This is to define the word
>> "reductionism" in such a way as to render it meaningless.  In the
>> same way, the word "political" is rendered meaningless by those
>> naifs who subscribe to the doctrine that "everything is political."
>
>I think I have to agree pretty much with this disagreement. One does not
want to
>leach all meaning from the term "reductionist." Pending further thought,
let me
>tentatively suggest, howver, that most of the really interesting (and
lasting)
>literary commentaries tend to be reductionist. That attempts to be too
broad run
>into the sort of thing that Pound skewers nicely in Canto 28:
>
>            And Mr Lourpee sat on the floor of the pension dining-room
>            Or perhaps it was in the alcove
>            And about him lay a great mass of pastells,
>            That is, stubbs and broken pencils of pastelll,
>            In pale indeterminate colours.
>            And he admired the Sage of Concord
>                    "To broad ever to make up his mind."
>...........................................................................
..............
>
>                                                       . . .and il Gran
Maestro
>            Mr Lizst had come to the home of her parents
>            And taken her on his prevalent knee and
>            She held that a sonnet was a sonnet
>            And ought never to be destroyed,
>            And had taken a number of courses
>            And continued with hopes of degrees and
>            Ended in a Baptist learnery
>                            Somewhere near the Rio Grande.
>
>After all, the *Cantos* take a pretty reductionist view of human history
-- "With
>usura the line grows thick" -- ridiculous, but without that "insight"
(horribly
>inaccurate and wonderfully fruitful) there would have been no poem, nor
any of the
>thousand topics the poem throws up for contemplation. Part of the ordinary
>person's thinking is adopting to "actual" conditions the brilliant errors of
>various reductionists.
>
>The physicists may or may not eventually come up with a TOE (Theory of
EVerything)
>that holds -- but if they do, it will be both a powerful reduction, *and* a
>pointer to huge realms of undiscovered material which will both
"explained" and
>not explained at all by the TOE.
>
>Carrol
>
>P.S. "I am afraid I do not agree with Carrol" -- Why afraid, I'm a fairly
harmless
>character. :-)
>
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