GM, In an English class there was a term describing how the weather in the story mirrored the charactor's mood...sunny/happy..cloudy/ morose.Does anyone know this term? Somehow Thomas Hardy was referenced. Thank you. {}s.
This article calls it the "pathetic fallacy".
Here is another good article on
The Pathetic Fallacy in Far from the Madding Crowd.P.S.
How to search the Internet :
1. Turn on computer.
2. Open the Internet.
3. Enter keywords into search engine.
4. Press enter.
: )
HL:
Be nice!
If you don't have a search word you can't search a dictionary, let alone the Internet.
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.
Hello, Kenneth, and welcome aBoard. Here is one of my favorite resources:
reverse dictionary I use this regularly, because as Dave Barry said, "Once you hit 50, ... the nouns are the first to go".
Great! Just when they had convinced me that my SADness was Seasonal Affective Disorder (
http://www.nmha.org/infoctr/factsheets/27.cfm ), I find out that I'm really just pathetic after all.
From the link: Hardy often uses weather as the "pathetic fallacy." This photograph in such a context might function similarly, as "our impressions of external things" receive a falseness produced by "violent feelings."
I'm not sure he or other authors only use it in this way though. When lightning splits the chestnut tree in Jane Eyre for exmaple, she and the reader can't but help see its relation to her personal predicament - is that fallacy? 'Pathetic fallacy is a loaded term and operates on a set of philosophical axioms of separateness that might be seen as a psychosis of alienation. One man's coincidence is another's sign and one's man plain sky another's crucible of the mind. Many authors have investigated this beyond the blanketing notion of 'pathetic fallacy'. The interplay between the (perceived) external and internal worlds cannot be written off with this one thin term.
Dear all repliers...I so appreciate this discourse.....I feel happy and cozy because of you all; not just the weather this time..{}s. ken pk
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is that fallacy?
The way I see it, "pathetic fallacy" is a set technical term which should not be plucked apart. Quite obviously, as such it lacks the negative connotations of pathetic as well as fallacy.
Being in Nigeria at this time can be very interresting as the harmatan in around the corner. A time of chill cold. This is a time tourists will enjoy.
I'm with wsieber on this one. The term refers to the fact that in the real world, nature does not modify the weather in order to complement the pathos of a human situation. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with an author of fiction making the weather do whatever they want it to do in a certain scene for dramatic effect.
> harmatan
welcome, Sonnie! I hadn't heard the term harmattan before. but then I don't know anything about Twi!
From Gurunet:
har·mat·tan (här'mə-tăn', här-măt'n)
n.
A dry dusty wind that blows along the northwest coast of Africa.
[Akan (Twi) haramata, possibly from Arabic ḥarām, evil thing, from ḥarama, to prohibit.]
Yes, welcome, Sonnie; we've not had a person posting from Nigeria before--that I knew of, anyway. Cool!
(Dang--just previewed; sorry about the numbers; dunno what to do about them other than delete, which would leave something to be desired in the copy I think.)
> not had a person posting from Nigeria before
lemme see, is that:
not had (a person from Nigeria) posting before ~ or,
not had a person (posting from Nigeria) before ?
I ask naturally only from my natal interest in Kaduna!
Welcome Sonnie.
Mav!!
Who turned your rock over??
hiya Fong
Just regained web connection from home after a hiatus that dragged out to a few weeks, coincident with madbad spell at work which swallowed all spare minutes in the dayze. Good to see your fonts again! Much love to Betsy too.
Hey! My fonts bun here alla long. It's yers what we bin done is missing.
> bun here alla long
Since I wasn't here to see your fonting pen, this answers the old conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest.
By the way, my reference to the tree that falls unobserved also refers to the John Ruskin piece that created the term under discussion:
The Pathetic Fallacy
