Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- INTRODUCTION: Speculative & Science Fiction: What is Past & Present … & What is Future?
- ARTICLES
- FEATURED ARTICLE
- INTERVIEWS
- LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
- SIX POEMS: ‘Answers that will not be swallowed’ (Poem)
- THREE POEMS: ‘The String of Discord’ (Poem)
- TRIBUTES
- REVIEWS
Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones: A Humanist & Critic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- INTRODUCTION: Speculative & Science Fiction: What is Past & Present … & What is Future?
- ARTICLES
- FEATURED ARTICLE
- INTERVIEWS
- LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
- SIX POEMS: ‘Answers that will not be swallowed’ (Poem)
- THREE POEMS: ‘The String of Discord’ (Poem)
- TRIBUTES
- REVIEWS
Summary
Eldred Jones's illuminating memoir, The FreetownBond, reveals a lot more about him as a man than wecould have gleaned from his literary or scholarly writing. This workdemonstrates that Jones is a symbol of education and humanism. To besure, his memoir is not only about himself, but is also a book oftributes to all those that he had come into contact with who touchedor enriched his life in a certain way.
Jones is a humanist who has always demonstrated the virtues ofpatriotism, altruism, refinement, humility and love oflearning. No one will deny that these positives areslowly approaching their sell-by dates in present-day Sierra Leone.In this light, I have chosen to celebrate him and the institution heepitomises in order to inspire others to emulate a dying breed.
I have attempted to examine the humanism of Jones from the standpointof A.C. Grayling thus:
humanists aspire to be ethical agents who wish always to respecttheir fellow human beings, to like them, to honour theirstrivings and to sympathise with their feelings. They wish tobegin every encounter, every relationship, with this attitude …and to join with their fellows in building just and decentsocieties where all can have an opportunity to flourish.
For that is what humanism is: it is, to repeat and insist, aboutthe value of things human … It is about human life. (‘The Milkof Humanist Kindness’)
Jones, Emeritus Professor of English and a national monument, is oneof ten children born to Eldred P.W. Jones and Ethline M. Jones inFreetown on 6 January 1925. He is a bonafide member of the Freetownsociety in which he lives and spends almost his entire life. Intheir own rights his parents were also humanists, though I do notbelieve that they labelled themselves thus. Note how Jones describeshis childhood family home:
Our house was indeed full of children, cousins real and acquired,many of whom were sent to my mother from the peninsular villagesfor ‘training’. At one time, five real cousins, three girls andtwo boys arrived from Nigeria where their parents worked, thegirls remaining in our family until they married. (The Freetown Bond: 7)
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- Information
- ALT 39Speculative and Science Fiction, pp. 214 - 222Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2021