By: Karla Harvey and Mackenzie Cormack

Pathetic Fallacy

Pathetic Fallacy is a literary device, where human like qualities or emotions are given to inanimate objects in nature.

It is a form of personification.Examples- Angry cloudsCruel windsSad flowersConfused stars

What is Pathetic Fallacy?

Used in Shakespeare’s Macbeth to describe the murder of Duncan.

“The night has been unruly. Where we lay,Our chimneys were blown down and, as they say,Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,And prophesying with accents terribleOf dire combustion and confused eventsNew hatched to the woeful time. The obscure birdClamored the livelong night. Some say the EarthWas feverous and did shake.” (Act II, Scene iii)

“The night has been unruly”, human emotion of “unruly” applied to “night”.

“New hatched to the woeful time”, “Woeful” applied to “time”.

Example-

Used in the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by: William Wordsworth.

“I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o’er vales and hills,”

A Pathetic Fallacy is used to apply the emotion of “loneliness”, to the “clouds”.

Example-

It is most commonly used in poetry.

It is sometimes used in prose for detail and it is occasionally used in pastoral elegies. A pastoral elegy is a type of poetry mourning death in the pastoral language of shepherds and farmers.

Where is it applied?

Personification is a broader term, were any human quality can be given to any inhuman like noun.

Pathetic Fallacy is a type of personification, were specifically human emotion is applied to inanimate objects in nature.

Difference Between Personification and Pathetic Fallacy.

The term was first coined by John Ruskin in his novel Modern Painters in volume III, part IV (1856).

Where Did the Term Come From?

Pathetic Fallacy, (2013), Dictionay.com, Retrieved November 22, 2013, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pathetic+fallacy.

Pathetic Fallacy, (2013)EncyclopaediaBrittanica.com, Retrieved November 21, 2013, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/446415/pathetic-fallacy

Pastoral Elegy, Everything2.com, Retrieved November 20th, 2013, from http://www.everything2.com/title/pastoral+elegy

Pathetic Fallacy, (2013), LiteracyDevices.net, Retrieved Nov 22nd, 2013, from http://literarydevices.net/pathetic-fallacy/

Bibliography

You have five minutes (it will be timed) to write as many pathetic fallacies as you can. We will have two winners, whoever’s pathetic fallacy we enjoy the most and whoever has the most correct pathetic fallacies.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It: