Pathetic fallacy

History of the phrase

Ruskin coined the term pathetic fallacy to criticize the sentimentality that was common to the poetry of the late 18th century, especially among poets like 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." 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; after Ruskin the use of the pathetic fallacy began to disappear. As a critic, Ruskin proved influential and is credited with having helped to refine poetic expression.

The meaning of the term has changed significantly from the idea Ruskin had in mind. 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.

The particular definition that Ruskin used for the word fallacy has since become obsolete. The word "fallacy" in modern usage refers primarily to an example of flawed reasoning, but for Ruskin and writers of the 19th century and earlier, fallacy was used to mean simply a "falseness". Similarly, the word "pathetic" simply meant for Ruskin "emotional" or "pertaining to emotion."

Ruskin states: "so long as we see that the feeling is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy." Commenting on a French ballad he says: "there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poetical expression, except in one stanza. ... [I]n the very presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. He records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him."