What
are the subjects, purposes, or, themes of literature? How does Hudson classify
them in the first chapter?
Hudson’s
An
Introduction to the Study of Literature is an interesting guide for the
beginners of literature. He does not simply define the literature in first
chapter but also classifies literature theme-wise and content-wise. He says
that literature comes out of life, hence life is the primary theme of literature,
but later he confirms five themes of literature.
Various
Themes of Literature
There
are various themes of literature. The five broad themes of literature,
according to Hudson, are:
1. The
Personal Experiences of Individuals as Individuals:
This includes the things which make up the sum-total
of the writer’s personal life. It suggests that literature deals with the
personal thoughts, ideas, experience, problems and achievements of writer’s
life. Literature is an expression of writer’s personal life as well. Whatever
experience man is having as individual, he reports all these experiences in
literature with enough sincerity.
2. The
Experience of Man as Man:
Some experiences of man as man are always the same,
such as, the great common questions of life and death, sin and destiny, God and
man’s relation to God, and, the general fate of human race. Literature deals
with all these aspects of man’s life as man. In this way, these form one of the
major themes of literature.
3. The
Relations of Individual with entire Social World:
The relation of individual with his fellows, or
entire social world, also forms an essential theme of literature. Literature,
in fact, is revelation of man’s relation with the whole world, his response to
the society and his problems with the world. How man acts or reacts to the
world that literature shows us.
4. The
External world of Nature and our relation to it:
Man lives in lap of nature. Nature has a great
importance in life of man. Man cannot think of his own existence without
nature. Nature is a good friend of man. And hence, it is for sure that nature
finds expression in all activities of man, including literature. In literature,
we find expression of writer’s love of nature and the relation of human with
it.
5. Man’s
effort to create and express under the various forms of literature and art:
Man,
by his nature, is unable to keep his experience, observations, emotions, ideas,
fancies, to himself, but he is on the contrary under the stress of constant
desire of expressing these to other and for that he chooses various channels of
expression. Thus man’s own effort to create and express under the various forms
of literature and art forms this theme of literature.
Followed
by these five themes of literature, Hudson discusses “five classes of
production.” These five classes are the
theme-based classifications of literature. They are:
1. The
literature of purely personal experience.
2. The
literature of common life of man as man.
3. The
literature of the social world under all its aspects.
4. The
literature which treats nature.
5. The
literature which treats of literature and art.
The
second type of classification which Hudson suggests is the content-based
classification. Here he classifies literature into three groups. They are:
1. Personal
literature
Personal literature is literature of
self-expression. It includes the different kinds of lyric of poetry, the poetry
of meditation and argument, and, elegy. It also includes the essay, treatise,
and criticism, written from personal point of view.
2. Objective
literature
Objective literature means literature which deals
objectively with life of other people. This includes history and biography, the
ballad and epic, the romance in verse and prose, the story in verse and prose,
and, novel and drama.
3. Descriptive
literature
This
is not an important division as above mentioned two groups may include this.
However Hudson says that it includes book of travel and descriptive essays and
poems.
To
conclude, we can say that Hudson suggest us the theme-based and the
content-based classification of literature in the first chapter.
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