So Alastair Fowler's castigating Stephen Greenblatt is like Thomas Edison's ticking off an electrician ("Heavyweights square up in bout of literary 'butt kicking'", March 4).
Greenblatt is the founder of new historicism, which has deeply influenced all modern English studies. Fowler devised "numerology", which might come in handy for cracking the Da Vinci code or predicting the end of the world.
How about another analogy: Henry Ford being honked at by Sir Clive Sinclair?
Graham Holderness
Hertfordshire University