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Saturday, September 11, 2021

Definition and Examples of Pathetic fallacy – Literary Terms

Tags: pathetic fallacy definition, pathetic fallacy examples, pathetic fallacy vs personification, pathetic fallacy examples, what is pathetic fallacy


Definition and Examples of Pathetic fallacy – Literary Terms

Pathetic fallacy:

A term coined by John Ruskin to criticize the use of PERSONIFICATION, in which human emotions are attributed to nature. Although many poets use this device, Ruskin found it a form of false emotionalism, as he made clear in the third volume of Modern Painters:

They rowed her in across the rolling foam-

The cruel, crawling foam.

The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the "pathetic fallacy."

See also:

PERSONIFICATION.

Tags: pathetic fallacy definition, pathetic fallacy examples, pathetic fallacy vs personification, pathetic fallacy examples, what is pathetic fallacy

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