What the elm?

Matthew King · 06 Jun 2007, 18:49 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: automatthew at gmail.com (Matthew King)
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2007 13:49:11 -0500
Subject: (urth) What the elm?
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370706061131k6f515373u3a0b6b7b5f81636e at mail.gmail.com>
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	<1f7617370706061131k6f515373u3a0b6b7b5f81636e at mail.gmail.com>
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On Jun 6, 2007, at 1:31 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:

> That being the case, I was perhaps a *little* disingenuous in using
> your post as a launching place for my own comment on the
> potential for over-zealous analysis of the Lupine textus; it was
> actually quite a bad example for my point, given that I think the
> elm is, in fact, hugely significant.

Your comment was well-launched and worthy of attention.  I would even  
pervert it into a principle:

Because Wolfe delights in the appropriation of people, places, and  
things, we should not consider an allusion or borrowing to be  
important to the interpretation of a work -- unless the connection  
sheds light on a **problem we have already identified**.

The discovery of an allusion, in other words, should not spawn new  
problems in interpretation.  Unless it obviously does, which I am  
sure will be the case somewhere in the Lupine corpus.

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