Word: themes
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...much an autobiography as an autobiographical defense of his Catholicism, Gilbert Keith Chesterton's memoirs, completed three months before his death last June, are most interesting when he neglects his theme and describes his relationship with his rivals. Born May 29, 1874, into an honest and respectable middle-class family, Chesterton lived long enough to admire even the hypocrisies of his Victorian household. His father was a real estate agent and surveyor, an ironic individual who reminded his son of a character by Dickens. One of the elder Chesterton's idiosyncrasies was to pretend that he knew...
...best-selling autobiography, Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain tried to "describe and assess the fate of a young generation ignorantly and involuntarily caught" in the chaos of the War and post-War years. Last week this earnest British writer offered a novel with a theme no less ambitious but a good deal less sharply defined: the relation of the feminist movement, the War and changing social standards to "the private destinies of individuals." The result is another of those curious hybrid volumes that have recently become numerous in English writing-a long (601 pages), formless book, half-tract and half...
...Hutchins aims to resurrect the American university from the depths of its degradation and confusion. He points out that the objective of education should be to prepare the student for intelligent action. With this as his central theme he clarifies the proper function of a university in the scheme of a man's whole education. A university is equipped only to pursue the fundamental truths and no more--to attempt anything else is to cripple its prime purpose. Taking wisdom as the result of both intellectual training and experience, Dr. Hutchins insists, contrary to the existing curricula of most colleges...
...book may or may not be necessary or desirable. Dr. Hutchins has quibbles with the present examination methods and the close association of research fact-finding and the professors; but whatever qualms we may have with these details, we wholly succumb to the relentless logic of his central theme. We thoroughly agree with his simple statement: "All that can be learned in a university is the general principles, the fundamental propositions, the theory of any discipline...
This year there will be a more distinct general theme--"the role of government in the national economy"--and an attempt will be made to insure the presentation of a well-planned agenda, whether the subject be employment, currency and credit control, or even one of the other subordinate headings. Further, it is planned to bring reports of the conclusions of each forum before a plenary session, there to be read and finally used as the basis for a discussion by a guest speaker. The result, it is easily seen, will be the showing of the whole diamond, rather than...