Until now, students who wanted to study literature had to do so in a restricted or hybrid form by majoring in one of the foreign language departments, the English Department's honors option II, or History and Literature. Comparative Literature remained a discipline reserved for graduate students.

But the Faculty this week changed all that when it voted overwhelmingly to establish an honors concentration in literature that will begin operations immediately and accept its first group of concentrators this spring.

The new major, supporters said at the meeting, will combine the study of literature from a historical and artistic perspective with the investigation of literary theory.

It will, at first, be highly selective, taking in only about 20 students a year. Concentrators will have to possess an advanced knowledge of one foreign language--advanced enough to enroll in a 100-level language course--and pass a special language exam administered by the concentration committee.

The concentration itself is, on paper, as rigorous as the admissions process. The proposal--outlined in a memo distributed to the Faculty last week--calls for concentrators to take a total of 16 half-courses, including:

* six special literature tutorials administered by the concentration committee;

* three 100-level literature classes in a foreign or classical language;

* five literature courses from the English, Comparative Literature or foreign language departments, or from the Core Curriculum;

* and two required literary theory courses designed and offered by the concentration committee.

"The new concentration will provide many new opportunities for students and Faculty but will preserve the fundamental aims of any study of literature," David D. Perkins '51, chairman of the English Department and a member of the committee that has been planning the literature concentration for more than a year, said at the meeting.

The concentration will probably draw most of its students from English and History and Literature, but because the numbers will be so small, the defections should have little effect on either of those concentrations.

The Faculty's decision, which came after a short debate, pleased Claudio Guillen, professor of Comparative Literature and of Romance Languages and Literatures. Guillen, who served on the planning committee and introduced the proposal at the meeting, said after the vote he thought it would generate enthusiasm among interested students and Faculty members.