Jones Criticizes U.S. Scholarship

American literary studies have failed in their prime purpose--providing a "broad highway" into national culture--the new Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Humanities stated in his inaugural address last night.

Howard Mumford Jones, first permanent occupant of the chair, criticized the "pessimism and parochialism" of American scholarship, which falls to provide "the proper fusion of national and international ideas." Students of the national culture often fall in two respects: they do not understand the United States' European background fully; and they tend to bypass Latin American contributions to literature.

Humanism thus has been limited by national boundaries, although supposed to be international in scope, Jones commented. An "antimony of our age" results, since science (supposedly limited by a nation's borders) has become an "endless frontier" transcending these boundaries. Humanism, on the other hand, has been increasingly restricted within a single nation.

An invited audience of Faculty members and Administration officials attended the hour-long Boylston Hall lecture. As Lowell Professor, Jones will give a new course, "Humane Traditions in America," with public lectures starting Thursday afternoon.