Dear Jon,

The short response is in canto 74:
                                as says Aristotle
    philosophy is not for the young men
    their Katholou can not be sufficiently derived from
            their hekasta
    their generalities cannot be born from a sufficient
                                                 phalanx of particulars

Another would be that in recent times 'Theory' has been the opium of the
intellectuals ....

By 'Theory' I mean 'Theory as it has infected US and UK academics,
especially those who profess to study literature'.  And I used the word
'reproduce'.  I also wrote of 'applying' 'Theory'.   If that doesn't
sufficiently indicate what I have in mind I can only envy your innocence.

You don't write like a 'Theorist'.

But I wasn't attacking theories properly understood and arrived at.  As I
understand it, for a theory to be valid and useful it must be a theory of a
specific set of particulars; and the user needs to keep its specific
particulars in mind.  At least I like to know what I'm talking about, and I
need to know what in particular others might be talking about.

My particulars when I object to 'Theory' are anecdotal, and extensive
enough, and all too common.

To adapt Blake, to theorize about things you have no particular knowledge of
is to be an idiot.  And there are university teachers, 'teachers'!, who
think their students should be taught 'Theory' regardless of what they know
or are interested in knowing.

Of course one should distinguish monoliths and monuments.

But what about the musical organisation of The Cantos?

David Moody