noun

• The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, especially in art and literature.

  ‘Of late he had a deeper understanding of pathetic fallacy as Ruskin had called it.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘No pathetic fallacy here, nature remains impervious to human crises.’
  • ‘This is not quite what Ruskin called the pathetic fallacy, that conviction of fellow-feeling between men and nature; it's more like the demonic fallacy.’
  • ‘It is the pathetic fallacy made literal - Winston's thoughts really do appear in the world, are indistinguishable from it.’
  • ‘The room had darkened, as if obeying the laws of pathetic fallacy.’
  • ‘I question this, taking it to be nothing more than idle pathetic fallacy.’
  • ‘Wordsworth in particular used the pathetic fallacy with great seriousness, not as a decorative device, but its use declined after Ruskin's formulation.’
  • ‘Such intelligence prevents any recourse to the pathetic fallacy.’
  • ‘Literary critics call it the pathetic fallacy: just as there's no such thing as a lonely mountain, there can be no such thing as a ‘selfish gene’.’
  • ‘Of course, thinking that the daffodils were actually extending a welcome to me is a pathetic fallacy.’