Word: puritan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Mexico], more than in the U.S., the family is regarded as a fundamental institution. ... It is believed that the conjugal visit keeps couples together. Whether or not we Americans have sufficiently outgrown our Puritan heritage to support such a humanitarian policy is a debatable question...
...expatriate of the first diaspora (circa 1880). Smith does not like expatriates of the second dispersion. Least of all does he like their chief anti-Miltonians, Expatriates Ezra Pound and Thomas Stearns Eliot. They, he charges, are Delilahs in a cunning campaign to shear the literary locks of the Puritan poetic Samson. Once more Smith raises the now famous question: Why does Ezra Pound...
Pound has never minced words about Milton. He dislikes the Puritan epicist for "his asinine bigotry, his beastly hebraism, the coarseness of his mentality." Says Smith, "Mr. Eliot is far too urbane to express his disapproval in such Miltonic terms," but he too carries on a "deft, inconspicuous sniping," has mentioned Dryden as being "far below Shakespeare, and even below Milton." "Note," cries vigilant Defender Smith, "the tiny drop of poison in the phrase . . . 'even Milton...
...Pound and Eliot are not the only anti-Miltonians. There are also Middleton Murry, Herbert Read, Bonamy Dobree. Against their stock charges of Milton's logorrhea, his maulings of English syntax, his Puritan intolerance, his philosophic narrowness. Defender Smith has a pat answer - "Not the thing said makes poetry, but a way of saying it." Milton "is world-great," says Smith quoting Carlyle on Dante, "not because he is worldwide, but because he is world-deep...
Winthrop won the 1940 contest from Davenport College. Since this year's puritan sextet is at least as good as last year's. Timothy Dwight will have to have improved a good bit over last year in order to win. However, it is hard to forecast House games, since there is no way of checking the two teams by comparative scores...