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 English cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in the third volume of his work Modern Painters (1856). [2] [3] [4]
Ruskin coined the term pathetic fallacy to define 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." [5] 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. [6]
The meaning of the term has changed significantly from the idea Ruskin had in mind. [7] 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 uncaring. [8] [9]
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 nowadays is defined as an example of flawed reasoning, but for Ruskin and writers of the 19th century and earlier, fallacy could be used to mean simply a "falseness". [10] In the same way, the word pathetic simply meant for Ruskin "emotional" or "pertaining to emotion." [11]
Setting aside Ruskin's original intentions, and despite this linguistic "rocky road," the two-word phrase has survived, though with a significantly altered meaning. [6]
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. [12]
Ruskin intended that pathetic fallacy may also refer to any untrue description: as in the description of a crocus as "gold," when the flower is, according to Ruskin, saffron in colour. [8]
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: [12]
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)
A pathetic fallacy such as "Nature abhors a vacuum" may help explain a scientific concept, though some caution against using pathetic fallacies in science writing for not being not strictly accurate. [13] [14]
A false etymology is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology. Nevertheless, folk/popular etymology may also refer to the process by which a word or phrase is changed because of a popular false etymology. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology", Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes a clear-cut distinction between the derivational-only popular etymology (DOPE) and the generative popular etymology (GPE): the DOPE refers to a popular false etymology involving no neologization, and the GPE refers to neologization generated by a popular false etymology.
Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.
Suspension of disbelief is the avoidance—often described as willing—of critical thinking and logic in understanding something that is unreal or impossible in reality, such as something in a work of speculative fiction, in order to believe it for the sake of enjoying its narrative. Historically, the concept originates in the Greco-Roman principles of theatre, wherein the audience ignores the unreality of fiction to experience catharsis from the actions and experiences of characters. The phrase was coined and elaborated upon by the English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1817 work Biographia Literaria: "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith".
Acmeism, or the Guild of Poets, was a modernist transient poetic school, which emerged c. 1911 or in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky. Their ideals were compactness of form and clarity of expression. The term was coined after the Greek word άκμη (ákmē), i.e., "the best age of man".
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from ordinary language use to produce a rhetorical effect. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into schemes, which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and tropes, where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify.
Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. He has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues. He was also an inspector of schools for thirty-five years, and supported the concept of state-regulated secondary education.
Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological)reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes.
The spasmodic poets were a group of British poets of the Victorian era. The term was coined by William Edmonstoune Aytoun with some derogatory as well as humorous intention. The epithet itself is attributed, by Thomas Carlyle, to Lord Byron.
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but in current usage the term commonly connotes a reliance on shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.
Poetaster, like rhymester or versifier, is a derogatory term applied to bad or inferior poets. Specifically, poetaster has implications of unwarranted pretensions to artistic value. The word was coined in Latin by Erasmus in 1521. It was first used in English by Ben Jonson in his 1600 play Cynthia's Revels; immediately afterwards Jonson chose it as the title of his 1601 play Poetaster. In that play the "poetaster" character is a satire on John Marston, one of Jonson's rivals in the Poetomachia or War of the Theatres.
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. In the arts, many things are commonly personified. These include numerous types of places, especially cities, countries, and continents, elements of the natural world such as the months or four seasons, four elements, four cardinal winds, five senses, and abstractions such as virtues, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins, the nine Muses, or death.
A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important question. It may be either a logical fallacy or a literary device that leads readers or audiences toward a false conclusion. A red herring may be used intentionally, as in mystery fiction or as part of rhetorical strategies, or may be used in argumentation inadvertently.
This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in particular, see Glossary of poetry terms.
This is a glossary of poetry terms.
— From Cantos 27 and 56, In Memoriam A.H.H., by Alfred Tennyson, published this year
A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. Keith and Lundburg describe a trope as "a substitution of a word or phrase by a less literal word or phrase". The word trope has also undergone a semantic change and now also describes commonly recurring or overused literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works. Literary tropes span almost every category of writing, such as poetry, film, plays, and video games.
Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: "the map is not the territory".
Shakespeare's influence extends from theater and literatures to present-day movies, Western philosophy, and the English language itself. William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the history of the English language, and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He transformed European theatre by expanding expectations about what could be accomplished through innovation in characterization, plot, language and genre. Shakespeare's writings have also impacted many notable novelists and poets over the years, including Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Maya Angelou, and continue to influence new authors even today. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the history of the English-speaking world after the various writers of the Bible; many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. According to Guinness Book of World Records Shakespeare remains the world’s best-selling playwright, with sales of his plays and poetry believed to have achieved in excess of four billion copies in the over 400 years since his death. He is also the third most translated author in history.
The Lucy poems are a series of five poems composed by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) between 1798 and 1801. All but one were first published during 1800 in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration between Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that was both Wordsworth's first major publication and a milestone in the early English Romantic movement. In the series, Wordsworth sought to write unaffected English verse infused with abstract ideals of beauty, nature, love, longing, and death.
In literary criticism and rhetoric, a tautology is a statement that repeats an idea, using near-synonymous morphemes, words or phrases, effectively "saying the same thing twice". Tautology and pleonasm are not consistently differentiated in literature. Like pleonasm, tautology is often considered a fault of style when unintentional. Intentional repetition may emphasize a thought or help the listener or reader understand a point. Sometimes logical tautologies like "Boys will be boys" are conflated with language tautologies, but a language tautology is not inherently true, while a logical tautology always is.
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