The Ivory Tower, New Style

Abstract

The Ivory Tower, New Style ROY McKEEN WILES Because most of the sixty or more papers which are being considered during this Annual Meeting of our Society are specialized, I have decided to refrain from making this address one more report on a specific project of research and instead to offer some observations which will, I hope, be of interest to more than one sector of our corporate enterprise. You will be relieved to know that I am avoiding such general topics as unemployment, violence in the streets, pollution, and corruption in government, all of which are very much in the air in our own time and could probably with some interest be investigated as they affected thought and conduct in the eighteenth century. My theme is the Ivory Tower, past, present, and future. Sainte-Beuve’s tour d’ivoire has for a long time been useful as the scholar’s place of contempla­ tion and retreat from unwelcome pressures, but it may have to be remodelled. The reason is that many a scholar who wishes to range freely in the realm of knowledge finds himself hampered in his search for truth if he keeps within the close quarters of the old edifice. Some months ago, when a group of Canadian scholars undertook to com­ pile an inventory of current projects of research in the humanities, we en­ countered one scholar who objected to being listed in the section on Classics, though he was member of a Department of Classics and his extensive publica­ tions all dealt with a Roman poet. That expert on Catullus protested that his field was not Classics but Literaturwissenschaft, and although his protestation 3 4 / ROY McKEEN WILES was inconvenient for the committee’s purposes, we could see that he had a point. Like him, many of us are no longer contented to confine ourselves within a structure that makes it difficult to communicate with others. Yet I happen to believe that there is still need for une tour d’ivoire, ein Zufluchtsort, the Ivory Tower, Old Style. The recognized authority in a particular field must not be distracted from his thorough, intensive study of a person or idea or product of human genius. Research in the humanities and related disciplines will continue to require the independent, sharply focussed inquiry of unprejudiced minds, intent on putting all shreds of evidence on their inferences in order to reach valid conclusions—all of this, naturally, without interruption and with the utmost scholarly integrity. That word “integrity” reminds me of an entertaining passage in William Congreve’s best comedy, The Way of the World (1700). If you have recently read or seen that play you will recall that at one point—it is early in the third act—Lady Wishfort hears with some alarm that her maid, Foible, has been seen in close conversation with young Mr. Mirabell, and she fears that Mirabell may have persuaded Foible to betray her. Mrs. Marwood tries to reassure her by telling her that she should not suspect Foible’s integrity, but Lady Wishfort cries out, “Ah, dear Marwood, what’s integrity to an opportunity? ” I shall presently discuss the “opportunity” which I see to be ours; meanwhile a good case can be made for the principle that scholarship of the highest order demands not only integrity in the sense of intellectual probity—which ought to be taken for granted anyway-but integrity in the other sense, which implies undivided attention in order to produce results that will be whole and complete. The scholarly world would suffer immeasureably if the “expert” were to be phased our in this age when so much that seemed permanent is changing. We need, and shall continue to need, the specialist in Diderot, in Lessing, in Vico, in Swift, and in other important personages of the eight­ eenth century, who must not be left to the dabblers and dilettantes. But isolation in an Ivory Tower may be dangerous; the “expert” who knows more and more about less and less may be wearing blinkers which cut off areas of research which could reveal important aspects of the whole and complete truth. It may be appropriate for the twentieth...