Word: pedantic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Aside from the immediate influence of his works on the field of letters, Kitteredge helped bring the public to think of scholarship as respectable endeavor, more than a pedant's ocupation. When it was remarked that Widener was "an elephant" among buildings in the yard, he countered, "What if it is? You could destroy all the other Harvard buildings to the northwest and, with Widener left standing, still have a University." For Kittredge, books were humanity recorded...
...Reconciling Power. It was not until after her retirement that her real career began. In 1930 her The Greek Way appeared, immediately caught the imagination of both scholars and general readers. It contained no musty footnotes, no pedant's bibliography. Edith Hamilton's raw material for her reconstruction of Athens was the literature of Greece itself. Whether describing the great homeward march of the Ten Thousand ("So. always cold and sometimes freezing, always hungry and sometimes starving, and always, always fighting, they held their own"), or the achievement of Aeschylus ("In a man of this heroic temper...
...grateful for the absence of the detailed flashbacks to peacetime life that have become the curse of war novels. There are some stereotypes but also some fresh, vivid portraits: Rokka, the veteran of the Winter War, who will fight his own way or not at all; Honkajoki, the eccentric pedant, who infuriates his officers by carrying a longbow into battle; Lahtinen, the Communist sympathizer, who wins a medal for bravery, yet takes a perverse pleasure in the stubborn resistance put up by the Reds...
...book and lyrics are a travesty, the actors are talented, and courageous. In the double role of the pedant Dr. Pangloss ("thrice graduated from Heidelberg"), and the pessimist Martin, Max Adrian has the play's best, and worst, lines. Confronting his roles with a scraggly singing voice and an enormous confidence, he is the star of the show. In the more innocuous part of Candide, Robert Rounseville acts stiffly but has a powerful and accurate singing voice. Barbara Cook as Cunegonde is an appealing actress with a good voice, and stops the show with one number, "Glitter...
...lovely, silvery scene of mourning over the death of Falstaff. Felicia Montealegre is delightful in both French and English as the Princess Katharine, who is wooed in the last act by the half-bashful Henry. Paul Sparer as the Welsh captain Fluellen is admirable as both a pedant and a patriot. Indeed, Fluellen's comic scenes are much more successful than those of the thieving Pistol, played by Ian Keith. Pistol's humor is obvious and heavy at best, and Keith seems to bear down a little harder than the role can bear...