Moreover, the increased size of the board of tutors has been accompanied, not by a proportional rise in the number of concentrators, but by a decrease in the time each tutor devotes to History and Lit. As a result, the tutors are to an extent less interested in History and Lit and have, some critics charge, very little idea of the field as a "synthetic" discipline. Taylor and Sterling Dow, Chairman of the Committee, have tried to alleviate the size of the problem by breaking the tutorial lunches up into fields, with the tutors in England, America and the other fields meeting in smaller groups. It is probably too early to tell how this system will work out.

One observer who doubts the efficacy of breaking down the tutorial luncheons into smaller units is Oscar Handlin, professor of history and a former chairman of the Committee on History and Literature. Handlin feels that the trouble with History and Lit is something much more basic than size.

Before the Second World War, he says, there was a "common point-of-view" in both the history and the literature departments. A potentiality for synthesis" existed; and this, according to Handlin, was the reason why the field was successful. Since the War, he argues, that common point-of-view has been lacking; the literature and history departments have moved away from each other and from the ideal of History and Lit. The dominant recent trend in the literature departments, he says, is non-historical. "This may be all to the good," he adds, "but it does undermine History and Lit."

These views on the trend of the literature departments are accepted by most history people and rejected by representatives of the English department. Bate feels that the explanation of History and Lit's difficulties is "far more complex" than Handlin would indicate. He points out that most of the courses offered by the English department are based on periods of time and that there are very few that are really unhistorical.

Brower, probably the chief spokesman at Harvard for the so-called "New Criticism" seconds Bate's point and adds that in general the adherents of a non-historical approach are "on the defensive" in the Harvard English department. Brower regards his approach to literature--"to have as full an experience as possible without thinking of time and place"--as one step away from History and Lit in order to move two steps closer.

A student should know how to read literature (and, incidentally, historical sources) before he can begin to synthesize. The problem is whether both goals--reading and synthesis--can be accomplished within a three-year period of undergraduate concentration. The departure from an historical approach, Brower feels, has been much exaggerated.

Professor Myron P. Gilmore, chairman of the history department, says that, while the Literature departments may have been moving away from the idea of History and Lit, his field has been coming closer. The emphasis is no longer on institutions, on political and military history, but rather on intellectual, social and cultural history. With History now doing some of the work of History and Lit, Gilmore and others believe, the synthetic aspect of the latter has been undermined.

Gilmore, Brower and Perry Miller feel that another important reason for History and Lit's present difficulties lies back in the Thirties themselves. The brilliant tutorial group of that period broke up rapidly because only Matthiessen and Miller were given tenure by the University; of these two, Matthiessen was a Professor of History and Literature, but Miller went into the English department and is now able to give very little time to History and Lit, his "first love." Work by senior faculty members in History and Lit is, incidently, unpaid ("purely a labor of love," says Professor Bate).

Thus, there is no avenue of advancement for young tutors interested in History and Lit; if they wish to survive, they must devote their time to a department. Under the present system, there can be no such thing as a full-time History and Lit man; the tutors are almost all quite young; there is a rapid turn-over; and senior professors, no matter how sincere their interest and concern for History and Lit, have too many departmental demands on their time to take even one or two tutees in the field. If History and Lit is to survive as a genuine synthetic disciplne, it must, Gilmore and Brower feel, have a system of permanent appointments.

The problem is, Wolff feels, that there are very few people who are "top-notch ttuors in both fields." He himself moved into History and Lit, not for an insight into a cultural entity, but "in order not to specialize too soon in either history or literature." Wolff's viewpoint is echoed by a senior concentrator who says, "I chose History and Lit, because I didn't want to spend the rest of my undergraduate life analysing poetry or learning names and dates."

Gilmore too is a bit wary of the synthesis. It is not, he says, "the entire reason" for History and Lit. The advantages of History and Lit, in his view, are that it is less comprehensive than history--it does not require a spread over a broad area of time or place--and provides a combination of historical and literary analysis. In some cases, he feels, the synthesis may even be "a little forced," and the fact that the synthesis is less evident now than in the past should not be considered a complete condemnation."

Thought he admires the synthesis as "an ideal goal," Professor Handlin questions whether it is worth recapturing. The successful synthesis of the Thirties, he says, rested on a "genuine point-of-view." It would not be worthwhile, he feels, to use such devices as breaking up the tutorial lunches to achieve an "artificial unity."

The present chairman of the Committee on History and Literature, Sterling Dow, does not talk of the field in terms of the synthesis. He predicts that "a new, non-mystical view of History and Lit will lead to more emphasis on the integrity of history and of literature." The value of History and Lit, Dow comments, is the value of knowing both disciplines, of "having two kinds of training, learning about creative art and social study."

The views of Wolff, Gilmore and Dow on this question may be, as Taylor puts it, "idiosyncratic." But the non-believers in the synthesis, if a minority, are a significant one, and there is remarkably little feeling for the fusion among the undergraduate concentrators. Students go into History and Lit, it would seem, in order to get some amount of experience with both disciplines; and most of them probably get nothing more than that out of the field, for the confu-