#91235
01/08/2003 5:38 AM
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Today's word cites pathetic fallacy with this meaning:
>The attribution of human traits to nature or inanimate objects.
[Coined by John Ruskin in 1856.]<
But I'm not familiar with this term. I've always used, heard, and been taught personification as the proper term for this.
Has anyone else ever heard pathetic fallacy used to describe traits of personification?
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#91236
01/08/2003 6:38 AM
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I always understood that the difference between pathetic fallacy and personification is that personification is a literary conceit, simply used for poetical or other effect, while pathetic fallcy refers to the practice of speaking or acting as if nature or whatever does actually have human traits.
When Tennyson said, "Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed", he was using personification -- presumably he didn't think that there was a being called Nature which could shriek.
On the other hand, if you say in a discussion about the environment that you cannot accept such and such a view because nature is cruel, that would be an example of pathetic fallacy because nature is not a physical being able to take pleasure in making other beings suffer.
I must admit I fail to see how the quotations supplied fit in with this.
Bingley
Bingley
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#91237
01/08/2003 7:00 AM
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From the essay where Rusking originally coined the term ( http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/ruskinj/), it would seem Ruskin meant for the term to be used in a different way, to mean the projection of our feelings onto the world around us: Thus, for instance, in Alton Locke-
They rowed her in across the rolling foam-
The cruel, crawling foam.
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. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'Pathetic Fallacy'. Bingley
Bingley
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#91238
01/08/2003 10:33 AM
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so pathetic fallacy is more about us, than it is the natural object? we're the ones being pathetic.
formerly known as etaoin...
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#91239
01/08/2003 12:47 PM
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Yep, Juan, I learned the term at school. And then there's anthropomorphism.
I think we've been through this before, but I can't remember the conclusions we decided on, if any.
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#91240
01/08/2003 12:54 PM
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#91241
01/08/2003 1:39 PM
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To exclude metaphors of human charateristics from poetry would deal it a fatal blow. (And I don't apologise for using a "pathetic fallacy" in that sentence. I had an English sinstructor who spent a whole hour warning us not to attribute human mental processes to animals. He limited "pathetic fallacy" to that. My idea of pathetic fallacy applies to religion, when we speak of God as some sort of superhuman. We have no more capability of understanding God than my dog (if I still had one) would understand what I do with my computer. I read the Ruskin essay, and i think it is a bunch of crap. His syspepsia had axxumed control of his thinking. http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/ruskinj/
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#91242
01/08/2003 3:33 PM
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The plot thickens!
>Date: Wed Nov 22 00:01:12 EST 2000
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--prosopopoeia
X-Bonus: This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere: the dew is never all dried at once: a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)
prosopopeia also prosopopoeia (pruh-so-puh-PEE-uh) noun
1. A figure of speech in which an absent or imaginary person is
represented as speaking.
2. A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are
endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human
form. Personification.
[Latin prosopopoeia, from Greek prosopopoiia : prosopon, face, mask,
dramatic character : pros-, pros- + opon, face (from ops, eye) + poiein,
to make.]
"This is not theft, but kidnapping, summoning, prosopopoeia. In Eliot's
earlier poem we still have one foot in another poet's hell. Here, Dante
is summoned to the City of London, his lines marauded, his inferno woven
within another of Eliot's own making."
Joseph Dinunzio, Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917,
The Review of English Studies, Aug 1998.
This week's theme: words from the world of literature.<
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#91243
01/08/2003 3:36 PM
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Posts: 544
addict
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addict
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Hi y'all - been away for a while, but I knew today's word would spark some discussion, and I wanted to be here for it. This is what we said before, when you all helped me get this idea more clearly, as I had mis-got it before: http://makeashorterlink.com/?F2E714203Happy new year and all that.
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#91245
01/08/2003 4:01 PM
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And here's the famous anthropomorphism thread, AnnaS: http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=30178It seems to me there was one other good discussion about fishing for a term for this after the anthropomorphism thread, but I can't place it...anynody? Sorry about not remmebering your pathetic fallacy thread, Hyla...either I missed or it must have fallen through my seine of retention here (sigh).
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#91246
01/08/2003 4:15 PM
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Thanks for looking it all up, y'all. And Hyla, good to see you back here!
seine of retention
Zees would be, I prresume, ze damming of ze rreever trrou Parris?
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#91247
01/08/2003 4:39 PM
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>Sorry about not remmebering your pathetic fallacy thread, Hyla... okay, considering juan's longevity status as a CT, and allowing as I'm still learning accepted usage of the term, does this thread then qualify as an honest-to-gosh YART? 
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#91248
01/08/2003 4:56 PM
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[blueokay, considering juan's longevity status as a CT, and allowing as I'm still learning accepted usage of the term, does this thread then qualify as an honest-to-gosh YART? R-E-I-N-Y-A-R-T-N-A-T-I-O-N ® ! ! ! 
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#91249
01/08/2003 5:00 PM
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R-E-I-N-Y-A-R-T-N-A-T-I-O-N ® ! ! !
Speaking of pathetic fallacies...
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#91250
01/08/2003 5:12 PM
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Speaking of pathetic fallacies...Well, it's better than your usual fallacious patheticisms... 
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#91251
01/08/2003 5:14 PM
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#91252
01/08/2003 5:39 PM
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N'N what?
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#91253
01/08/2003 5:46 PM
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Posts: 13,803
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#91254
01/08/2003 6:46 PM
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tsuwm used a smiley face! 
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#91255
01/08/2003 6:50 PM
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smiley face
Musta was a typo.
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#91256
01/08/2003 7:11 PM
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>tsuwm used a smiley face! and I must say, I was sorely tempted to  at my own humor.
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#91257
01/08/2003 7:23 PM
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Posts: 4,189
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tsuwm's Yeah, I noticed that, too...thought it must've been a yellow ink blot or something'... And, what's more...he dared to joke in Q&A! And since when do you own "yikes!", ASp?  I ain't payin'!
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#91258
01/08/2003 7:27 PM
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I ain't payin'!
You ain't been payin' attention, is what.
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#91259
01/08/2003 7:31 PM
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Posts: 13,803
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own "yikes!"
You could stick a extra N in there; call it YiNkes! and avoid the punitive damages award (but not the lawyer's fees)
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#91260
01/08/2003 10:12 PM
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YiNkesYeah, okay...YiNkes is pretty close to Yankees, as in New York, so I'm in! BTW, how're those Cubbies doin' lately? [hitting-below-the-belt-now-e]
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#91261
01/08/2003 10:37 PM
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Posts: 13,803
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how're those Cubbies doin' lately?
They've gone longer without a loss than the Yankees.
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