Much of today's criticism tends to "darken understanding and blight enjoyment" of literature, Dame Helen Gardner, Norton Professor of Poetry and professor of English literature emerita at Oxford, said yesterday in the first of the 1979-80 Norton Lectures, titled "Wanted: A New Humanism."

Gardner denounced the orientation of current literary criticism toward empty scholarship and said it neglects the actual experience of reading.

Condemning the "frivolity and triviality" of the "sporting around dachshunds," Gardner said she is unhappy with the current trend towards technical jargon and over-interpretation.

She called for the explication of works of poetry and prose to foster understanding and enjoyment, rather than the overly intellectual analysis prevalent today. "Critics, with their abtruse theories and perverse and barren cerebrations, often make the study of literature a highly sophisticated war game," Gardner said.

"I see an underlying destructive urge of a new school of critics that seems to reject the author's authority," she added.

Gardner, who has written more than a dozen books, follows such luminaries as e.e. cumminings and T.S. Eliot to the Norton podium. Frank Kermode delivered last year's series.