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=                          Pathetic fallacy                          =
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                            Introduction
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The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of
human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not
human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic
descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves
dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The British cultural critic
John Ruskin coined the term in his book, 'Modern Painters' (1843-60).


                       History of the phrase
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Ruskin coined the term "pathetic fallacy" to attack the sentimentality
that was common to the poetry of the late 18th century, and which was
rampant among poets including Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and
Keats. Wordsworth supported this use of personification based on
emotion by claiming that "objects ... derive their influence not from
properties inherent in them ... but from such as are bestowed upon
them by the minds of those who are conversant with or affected by
these objects." However Tennyson, in his own poetry, began to refine
and diminish such expressions, and introduced an emphasis on what
might be called a more scientific comparison of objects in terms of
sense perception.  The old order was beginning to be replaced by the
new just as Ruskin addressed the matter, and the use of the pathetic
fallacy markedly began to disappear. As a critic, Ruskin proved
influential and is credited with having helped to refine poetic
expression.

The meaning of the term has changed significantly from the idea Ruskin
had in mind.  Ruskin's original definition is "emotional falseness",
or the falseness that occurs to one's perceptions when influenced by
violent or heightened emotion.  For example, when a person is unhinged
by grief, the clouds might seem darker than they are, or perhaps
mournful or perhaps even uncaring.

There have been other changes to Ruskin's phrase since he coined it:
The particular definition that Ruskin used for the word 'fallacy' has
since become obsolete.  The word 'fallacy' nowadays is defined as an
example of a flawed logic, but for Ruskin and writers of the 19th
century and earlier, "fallacy" could be used to mean simply a
"falseness". In the same way, the word 'pathetic' simply meant for
Ruskin "emotional" or "pertaining to emotion".

Setting aside Ruskin's original intentions, and despite this
linguistic 'rocky road', the two-word phrase has survived, though with
a significantly altered meaning.


               Examples of Ruskin's original meaning
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A yellow 'Crocus angustifolius' known as Cloth of gold crocus.
('Curtis's Botanical Magazine', 1803)
In his essay, Ruskin demonstrates his original meaning by offering
lines of a poem:

They rowed her in across the rolling foam�
The cruel, crawling foam...

Ruskin then points out that "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"�yet,
Ruskin did not disapprove of this use of the pathetic fallacy:

Now, so long as we see that the feeling is true, we pardon, or are
even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight, which it induces: we
are pleased, for instance, with those lines ... above quoted, not
because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully
describe sorrow.

Ruskin intended that pathetic fallacy may also refer to any "untrue"
quality: as in the description of a crocus as "gold", when the flower
is, according to Ruskin, saffron in color.

The following, a stanza from the poem "Maud" (1855) by Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, demonstrates what John Ruskin, in 'Modern Painters', said
was an "exquisite" instance of the use of the pathetic fallacy:


There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate.
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate.
The red rose cries, "She is near, she is near;"
And the white rose weeps, "She is late;"
The larkspur listens, "I hear, I hear;"
And the lily whispers, "I wait." (Part 1, 'XXII', 10)


                              Science
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In science, the term "pathetic fallacy" is used in a pejorative way in
order to discourage the kind of figurative speech in descriptions that
might not be strictly accurate and clear, and that might communicate a
false impression of a natural phenomenon. An example is the
metaphorical phrase "Nature abhors a vacuum", which contains the
suggestion that nature is capable of abhorring something. There are
more accurate and scientific ways to describe nature and vacuums.

Another example of a pathetic fallacy is the expression, "Air hates to
be crowded, and, when compressed, it will try to escape to an area of
lower pressure." It is not accurate to suggest that air "hates"
anything or "tries" to do anything. One way to express the ideas that
underlie that phrase in a more scientific manner can be found and
described in the kinetic theory of gases: effusion or  movement
towards lower pressure occurs because unobstructed gas molecules will
become more evenly distributed between high- and low-pressure zones,
by a flow from the former to the latter.


                              See also
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* Animism, the religious belief that objects, places and creatures
possess spiritual essence.
* Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human traits, emotions, or
intentions to non-human entities.
* Figure of speech, an expression that uses words to mean something
different from their ordinary meaning:
* Morgan's Canon, the idea that it can be fallacious to interpret
animal activity in terms of human psychology.
* List of narrative techniques


                          Further reading
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* Ruskin, J., "Of the Pathetic Fallacy", Modern Painters III (1856)
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/ruskinj/
* Abrams, M.H. 'A Glossary of Literary Terms', 7th edition. Fort
Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. .
* Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth (eds.). 'The Johns Hopkins
Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994. .


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