Robert S. Fitzgerald '33, poet and translator, has been named Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory. The prestigious chair has been vacant since Archibald MacLeish retired in 1962.

In an interview yesterday, Fitzgerald, presently lecturer on English here, said that he was "surprised and overcome" by the appointment. He pointed out that his only previous connection with Boylston was his winning of the Boylston Prize for Elocution as an undergraduate at Harvard.

Fitzgerald, after a number of visiting professorships at other institutions, came to Harvard this year. Last fall he taught English Ta, an advanced course in composition, and Comp Lit 201, Studies in Narrative Poetry. This semester he is teaching English Tb and English 283, a course in versification.

Fitzgerald is widely known as a translator of classical Greek writings. He has translated into English Homer's "Odyssey," Sophocles' "Oedipus at Colonus," and, with Dudely Fitts, Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex," Sophocles' "Antigone" and Euripides "Alcestis." In 1961 he won the first Bollingen Award for Translation for his work on Homer's "Odyssey."

He has recently finished editing a collection of poems by James Agee, and next fall plans to begin a verse translation of Homer's "Iliad." At the same time, he will start another volume of poetry.

Like his predecessor MacLeish. Fitzgerald's career has included journalism as well as poetry. His first book, "Poems," was published in 1935 while he was a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune. In 1936 he began writing business and financial news for Time magazine. His second book. "A Wreath for the Sea," was published in 1943, the same year he left Time to serve in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Returning to Time for three years in 1946, he was also poetry editor for The New Republic and an instructor at Sarah Lawrence College.

In 1953 Fitzgerald and his family moved to Italy, living there until the fall. During this period he translated the "Odyssey" and wrote his third book of poems, "In the Rose of Time."

Thomas Boylston bequeathed money to Harvard in 1771 to endow a professorship. The first Boylston Professor. John Quincy Adams, was appointed in 1806.