pathetic fallacy

[Cmosely11]

what does everybody think about it?

[Blythe]

I think it's the only way that the world keeps "spinning."

[Gabe1]

Originally posted by Cmosely11:
what does everybody think about it?

*Just call me pokey.

*Well, I think I agree with Ruskin, to a point. His statement that the "excessive use of pathetic fallacy is the mark of an inferior poet" is an apt one so long as the reader's focus stays on the word "excessive."
However, that is something of a silly statement when one considers that the excessive use of anything is necessarily bad.
Excepting that, I think that the pathetic fallacy can be and has been used to a very good effect. Unless I am mistaken, it is actually a requirement is some genres.

Be well.

-Gabriel

[SkyyAngel]

Pathetic Fallacy:
The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature; for example, angry clouds; a cruel wind.

Thanks for enlightening me.

I agree with most of what Gabriel said. Anything is excess can be detrimental.

Balance.

Actually, aren't we just projecting what we feel (either because of the objects themselves or perhaps the objects are subject to our moods because they are inanimate) onto the inanimate objects?

------------------
God thinks in geniuses,
dreams in poets
and sleeps in the rest of us.
~Konrad Adenauer

[Julie]

Originally posted by Cmosely11:
what does everybody think about it?

I think that it's difficult to write many images without it. Even when I don't realize I'm ascribing an emotion to an object, still I often am.

Of course, some of English's most appalling cliches are from the same source: the angry sea, the weeping clouds, the smiling sun, the biting wind.

In some of these, it's hard to distinguish between simple descriptive writing, metaphors, and pathetic fallacy (which term I hate. I much prefer "personification").

"the shouting telephone" does that say the telephone shouts, or that the sound the telephone makes is akin to a shout? One way is personification, the other is a metaphor. What, exactly, marks the difference? One gets scorned, the other praised. I've never understood it.

Julie



[This message has been edited by Julie (edited 01-03-2001).]

[Britomart]

What's the difference between personification and a pathetic fallacy? Can anyone explain it to me?

[Kemmer]

I would have said that we shouldn't try to personify nature in modern poetry any more than we'd use "stock epithets."

However, what the Frost did to my windshield this morning, well, that had to be pure malice, so who knows? Maybe Nature really wants to be personified... or at least worshipped. http://www.everypoet.com/poetry/poetry_forums/wink.gif

Kemmer