Part II THE TYPE-FORMS OF PROSE DISCOURSE CHAPTER VI CLASSIFICATION OF COMPOSITIONS 60. In the preceding chapters, we have been considering the general principles of composition, the principles applicable to all kinds of compositions, whatever be their subject-matter or purpose. There are certain other principles, however, having a more limited application which it is equally important that we should study. There are, for example, principles which would be readily applicable to compositions of an argumentative kind, but which would have no point if applied, let us say, to compositions of a purely descriptive nature. These special principles it will be found most convenient to treat under the headings of the various kinds or type-forms of dis course. Literature, under which term, taken in its widest. sense, we may include all compositions of whatsoever kind, may be classified in a variety of ways. Setting aside poetry as beyond the scope of our present study, we may, for example, divide prose literature into two classes, the literature of thought and the literature of emotion, according as we conceive the main purpose of the composition to be the conveying of information, or the stimulating of emotion. Again, taking subject-matter as the basis of our classification, we may make such a division as the following: history, fiction, biography, science, travels, etc. For our purposes, however, neither of these classifications is satisfactory. In the first, the classes are too wide or comprehensive; in the second, they are not comprehensive enough. A more convenient classification is the traditional one which groups all prose compositions under the four heads: description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. other that The basis of this classification is partly subjectmatter and partly the aim or purpose of the discourse. Thus, a composition, when it deals with things, and deals with them in such a way as to appeal to the senses or the imagination of the reader, is said to be a description. On the hand, if it deals with things in action, is, with characters expressing themselves in action, it is called narration. Again, if it deals with principles, laws, or general ideas, and does so for the purpose of making clear their meaning, it is called exposition If, however, taking as its subject-matter these same principles, laws, or general ideas, it embodies them in propositions and seeks to establish their truth or falsity, it is called argumentation. Practically all prose compositions may be included under these four heads, though other classes are sometimes made, as, for example, criticism and persuasion. These, however, are more properly to be regarded as subclasses than as coördinate with those just mentioned. Criticism is in reality a variety of exposition, and persuasion, a particular kind of argumentation. It must not be supposed that every composition belongs wholly to one or another of these classes. The classification is not a very exact one, and from the nature of the case cannot be. In the actual business of writing, it is seldom that a writer wishes to confine himself exclusively to description or to exposition, as the case may be. His method of treating his subject may call now for description, now for exposition, and again for narration or argumentation. Hence it is not often that we find an example of any one kind of discourse in its purity. On the contrary, we find the various kinds more or less intermingled, shading into one another, in fact, and often to such an extent that it is impossible to tell which kind is the predominant one. In most cases, however, one type-form or another will predominate and give its character to the composition. Each of these type-forms has its own set of special principles applicable to it alone. The consideration of these special principles will form the business of the succeeding chapters. |