Pathetic fallacy
A literary device that attributes human emotions or intentions to nonhuman nature, such as weather, landscapes, or animals.
Personification: A figure of speech that gives human qualities or actions to nonhuman things or abstractions. Pathetic fallacy is a narrower form of personification focused on nature and human emotion.
Mood (literature): The emotional atmosphere a literary work creates for its audience. Storms, sunshine, and other natural details can establish or intensify a passage’s mood.
John Ruskin: A Victorian writer, art critic, and social thinker whose works include Modern Painters. Ruskin introduced “pathetic fallacy” as a critical term in his account of poetic description.
King Lear: A tragedy by William Shakespeare about an aging king whose division of his kingdom brings catastrophe. The storm on the heath externalizes Lear’s anguish and the disorder surrounding him.
Objective correlative: A set of objects, situations, or events used to evoke a particular emotion in a work of art. It presents external circumstances as an emotional equivalent rather than attributing feelings to nature.
Anthropomorphism: The attribution of human characteristics, motives, or behavior to nonhuman beings or objects. Both assign human qualities beyond humanity, but pathetic fallacy specifically links emotion to nature.
Setting (narrative): The time and place in which a narrative’s events occur. Pathetic fallacy makes the setting seem emotionally responsive to the story.
Modern Painters: John Ruskin’s multivolume work on painting, published between 1843 and 1860. Ruskin discussed the pathetic fallacy in the third volume, published in 1856.
Macbeth: A tragedy by William Shakespeare about a Scottish nobleman driven to seize the crown. Its unnatural darkness and violent weather accompany political murder and upheaval.
Naturalism (literature): A literary movement that depicts human life as shaped by heredity, environment, and social conditions. Naturalist description treats environment as material circumstance, not necessarily as an emotional mirror.