|
IN MEMORIAM
WILSON MATHIS HUDSON
Wilson Mathis Hudson was born in Flatonia, Texas,
on December 26, 1907. He spent his early childhood in Mexico and
Flatonia, but for most of his life Austin was home. He not only
received his high school and much of his college education in this
city, but he also taught at The University of Texas for twenty-eight
years.
After earning a BA (Phi Beta Kappa) in English and French in 1929 and an
MA in English in 1930 at the University, Professor Hudson spent seven years
as an English instructor at what was then the Rice Institute in Houston,
attending graduate summer school at the University of Chicago for four
of those years. Following a short hiatus from academe working for G. & C.
Merriam Co., the publisher of Webster's Dictionary, he began full-time
graduate study in English at the University of Chicago in 1938. Soon after
the United States of America entered World War II, Professor Hudson joined
the Army Air Force as a second lieutenant, finishing his tour of duty in
1946 with the rank of captain. In the fall of that year he joined the University's
English department as an instructor. After earning his PhD from Chicago,
he was promoted to assistant professor in 1947, to associate professor
in 1953, and to full professor in 1964. He retired in the summer of 1974
and was accorded professor emeritus status by President Stephen H. Spurr.
Throughout his career, Professor Hudson was unusually eclectic in his teaching,
especially at the undergraduate level. He offered courses in language,
poetry, and fiction in regional as well as in international literatures.
Starting in the fall of 1950, he taught the upper-division Life and Literature
of the Southwest course almost every year, taking it over from the faculty
member who had designed and instituted it, J. Frank Dobie, and assuring
the continuity of a course that is still a vibrant part of the University's
English department curriculum. Almost as often, he taught The European
Novel course that included works of internationally renowned writers, from
Dostoyevsky to Camus. Professor Hudson's course offerings also spanned
lengthy historical periods, encompassing not only The American Novel after
1920 but also The Poetry of Milton. His graduate seminars, too, embraced
a variety of topics, from the Epic, to T.S. Eliot, to Yeats and the Irish
Revival.
Professor Hudson's scholarly research and writing reflected his pedagogical
eclecticism. Early in his career, he not only published essays on early
Celtic literature—on works ascribed to the legendary Irish warrior-bard,
Ossian, for example, and to Taliesin, the sixth-century Welsh poet—but
also on more technical topics of language and writing. However, he soon
settled on the subjects that he would make his particular specialties for
the rest of his career: myth theory, Western U.S. literature, and folklore
of the Southwest. He published essays treating Jung's ideas on archetype
and on the collective unconscious, Freud's on the primal horde, Mircea
Eliade's on sacred symbolism. His major contribution to the field of Western
literature studies was a 1964 book, Andy Adams: His Life and Writings (1964),
a comprehensive overview of the novelist whose Log of a Cowboy (1903)
many critics consider one of the most realistic books about cowboy life
ever written.
It was folklore of the Southwest, however, that quickly became Wilson Hudson's
overriding interest, and it was in the service of folklore that he spent
most of his energies. Though a member of many scholarly societies of national
scope—the Modern Language Association, the American Studies Association,
the Conference of College Teachers of English—Professor Hudson dedicated
much of his professional life to the Texas Folklore Society (TFS), the
second-oldest state folklore society in the U.S., which was started in
1909 by John A. Lomax, then at Texas A&M, and UT assistant professor
of English L.W. Payne. Professor Hudson served TFS in a variety of administrative
positions, among them secretary-treasurer, vice-president, and president,
eventually being honored with his election as a Fellow in 1972. But his
greatest contribution to TFS, and through it to the intellectual world,
was undoubtedly his longtime editorial role in the book series, Publications
of the Texas Folklore Society, begun by internationally renowned folktale
scholar Stith Thompson in 1916 and still flourishing today under the editorship
of Stephen F. Austin University's Professor Francis Edward Abernethy. Beginning
in 1951 with The Healer of Los Olmos and Other Mexican Lore and
ending in 1972 with Diamond Bessie and the Shepherds, Wilson Hudson
edited or co-edited almost a score of books in the PTFS series, including
such well-known volumes as Mesquite and Willow (1957), A Good
Tale and a Bonnie Tune (1964), Tire Shrinker to Dragster (1968),
and Hunters and Healers (1971).
He is remembered as a colleague whose personal warmth and human concern
were as much in daily evidence as his intellect. "He was very kind,
very wise, and very gentle," remembers one of those colleagues, "who
would ask about my wife, kids, home--ordinary things. He always had a story
to tell, and I always felt privileged to be the one hearing it." Wilson
Hudson died in his longtime hometown of Austin on February 19, 2002, almost
two months into his ninety-fifth year. He was preceded in death by both
his first wife, Mildred (née Ruckman), whom he married
in 1932 and who died in 1949, and his second wife, Browning scholar and
Southwest Texas State University English professor Gertrude Catherine Reese,
whom he married in 1951 and who died in 2001. Professor Hudson donated
his books and papers to the Southwestern Writers Collection, and they are
housed in Special Collections at the Albert B. Alkek Library of Southwest
Texas State University in San Marcos.
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Roger deV. Renwick (chair), Don B. Graham, and James D. Garrison.
|
