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I now have the line and the whole poem. Very obscure text.

Far too esoteric for my liking, involving a lot of reading of specialised online texts to see how various elements cohere and make some sense of the title. Writing the quotation in the manner prescribed seems pretty pointless (is there authoritative justification for it?).

Now to look for a clash to be resolved, since I still don't have one.

Hi Dryden

So you have the clash yet or would you like a nudge?

Writing the quotation in the manner prescribed I guess is meant to display that you have discovered the significance of one of the entries mentioned earlier. And if you look up that entry in Chambers it should lead you to the clash as it encapsulates the two relevant letters.

Are we to replace the clash by the character? It could be read as a cryptic alternative - or am I over-complicating...?

I don't think this one needs any over-complicating Greengage - that's how I took it to be interpreted and that is I think exactly what is suggested by the preamble.

Arguing against myself now, s-pugh, but what then does 'similarly' mean in the preamble? Are we to put the alterNative indicated as a replacement for the two characters? Off out now to walk and ponder....

Similarly in the preamble I believe refers to the entry of the quotation from the poem which using modern characters (if not language) consists of 36 letters but reduces to 32 when suitably resolved ...

I suppose I should add that the item in question occurs 4 times in the quoted line hence 8 characters become 4.

I've finally solved everything in this rather over-egged pudding. One thing though: I have the all-important answer to 29dn (with TT removed from def), but I can't parse the wordplay, which seems to deliver only T + OR + H. What am I missing?