pathetic fallacy

pathetic fallacy
the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings, as in the smiling skies; the angry sea.
[coined by John Ruskin in Modern Painters Vol. III, Part IV (1856)]

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      poetic practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals. The practice is a form of personification that is as old as poetry, in which it has always been common to find smiling or dancing flowers, angry or cruel winds, brooding mountains, moping owls, or happy larks. The term was coined by John Ruskin in Modern Painters (1843–60). In some classical poetic forms such as the pastoral (pastoral literature) elegy, the pathetic fallacy is actually a required convention. In Milton's (Milton, John) “On The Morning of Christ's Nativity,” all aspects of nature react affectively to the event of Christ's birth.

The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fixt in steadfast gaze

      Ruskin considered the excessive use of the fallacy the mark of an inferior poet. Later poets, however—especially the Imagists of the early 20th century, as well as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound—used the pathetic fallacy freely and effectively.

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Universalium. 2010.

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Look at other dictionaries:

  • pathetic fallacy — n. [first used by J. Ruskin] in literature, the attribution of human feelings and characteristics to inanimate things (Ex.: the angry sea, a stubborn door) …   English World dictionary

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  • pathetic fallacy — noun the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals …   English new terms dictionary

  • pathetic fallacy — noun (U) technical the idea of describing the sea, rocks, weather etc in literature as if they were human …   Longman dictionary of contemporary English

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