Pathetic fallacy
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In literary criticism, the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human emotions, thoughts, sensations, and feelings. The term was coined by John Ruskin in his 1856 work Modern Painters, in which Ruskin wrote that the aim of pathetic fallacy was “to signify any description of inanimate natural objects that ascribes to them human capabilities, sensations, and emotions." In the narrow sense intended by Ruskin, the pathetic fallacy is an artistic failing, since he believed the central value of art, literary or visual, ought to be its truthful representation of the world as it appears to our senses, not as it appears in our imaginative and fanciful reflections upon it. (The meaning of the phrase is often obscure to modern readers accustomed only to the definition of "pathetic" meaning "pitifully inferior" rather than its other definitions, including "capable of feeling".).
Critics after Ruskin have generally not followed him in regarding the pathetic fallacy as an artistic mistake, instead assuming that attribution of sentient, humanising traits to nature is a centrally human way of understanding the world, and that it does have a useful and important role in art and literature. Indeed, to reject the use of pathetic fallacy would mean dismissing most Romantic poetry and many of Shakespeare's most memorable images. However, literary critics find it useful to have a specific term for describing anthropomorphic tendencies in art and literature and so the phrase is currently used in a neutral and judgement-free sense.
The pathetic fallacy is not a logical fallacy since it does not imply a mistake in reasoning. As a rhetorical figure it bears some resemblance to personification, although it is less formal.
The pathetic fallacy is not confined to fiction, but was a generally accepted convention of pre-World War I prose. For example, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica abounds in use of the pathetic fallacy even though it is ostensibly a purely factual work.
Examples of the pathetic fallacy include:
- "The stars will awaken / Though the moon sleep a full hour later" (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- "The fruitful field / Laughs with abundance" (William Cowper)
- "Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty" (Walt Whitman)
- "Nature abhors a vacuum" (John Ruskin's translation of the well-known Medieval saying natura abhorret a vacuo, in his work Modern Painters.)
References
- Abrams, M.H., A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th edition, Harcourt, 1993.
- Crist, Eileen, Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1999.
- Groden, M. (ed.), The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
See also
External links
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