Pathetic Fallacy - is this a "thing"

[marmia1234]

My sons English report came home ( disclaimers: not in UK and I have a degree in English Literature)
In one section of the test they had to match a quote to its corresponding technique. For example - simile, imagery, metaphor, personification etc. One of those techniques was "pathetic fallacy" . I am flummoxed. Is this a normal thing I just missed somehow? Once he had a stab at which one was the "pathetic fallacy he was stuffed and only got 4 right out of 7 as was a bit discombobulated. Is this a common term in the UK or US
I have googled and it appears to be a version of personification.
Why is it pathetic?
Trying to add poll but seem to be unable.
YABU - everybody knows the term "Pathetic fallacy"
YANBU - WTF nobody has heard of that

Nor is it necessary to use the word 'irony' when discussing the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, but given that it's an excellent example of it, why wouldn't you?

Did you mean to quote me? Your comment seems irrelevant to mine.

Sorry, double post.

Used this a lot in my GCSE MacBeth paper.

Yes it is.

Why would you not google this before starting a thread here?

Yep. Primary schools using Jane Considine for writing teach children this certainly from Y3 onwards. We've all seen it in movies - thunder and lightning when a shot is shown of Dracula's castle, pouring rain when a character is heartbroken etc. It's just the term is becoming more well-known now.

If you are familiar with the term, then of course you would. But if you are not, you don’t need to. I know this to be true because I learned the term some 40 years after I studied WH for A level English, and not knowing the term had no deleterious effect on my performance.

Previous and remarkably condescending posters imply that one cannot even discuss EB’s use of weather as symbolism without knowing the term, which is… fallacious.

I think because she meant is this something other posters know about.

Pathetically fallacious?!

So this isn't what Effie Gray said to Ruskin on their wedding night?

@MaxJLHardy I referenced that upthread and nobody bit! 😀

I only recently realised this is the term. I thought it was prophetic fallacy which makes more sense to me!

Ha! Quite.

I hope you spelled Macbeth correctly in the paper 😂

Surely it's fairly obvious that "pathetic" is a reference to pathos? I don't know what the term means, am not an English teacher etc but that part is pretty clear to me.

Yes, definitely came up at GCSE and A-level in the 90s.

I learnt this in 1982 when we studied Thomas Hardy at A Level!

I know the term from secondary school, and went on to get an English Lit degree.

My view is that pathetic fallacy is generally one of the first literary terms that children are taught but it's such a simple and common concept that you don't hear it used much at higher levels of education. It feels a little trite to mention.

No they wouldnt. Inanimate things can crash. Personification is giving them their own human emotions. Pathetic fallacy is showing them reflecting the emotions of humans.

Not necessarily. It’s still pathetic fallacy if the rain just…rains while the character weeps.

You have to have a good appreciation o the effects created and the techniques used to create them, which is what the exam is testing. There has never been a requirement to ‘appreciate’ the text. I hated the text I got my best mark for in my degree.

'Pathetic fallacy' rings the vaguest of bells. I remember it in relation to a poem about a child waking at night and going into 'the snoring passage'. Rather nice.

I did pretty well on my English degree (well, joint hons) despite never reading a single one of the texts. I was able to get by purely from parroting analysis from elsewhere.

I think English Lit is just one of those subjects where the grading scheme cannot really measure if the student has done the work, and developed a true understanding, or not.

I find this quite hard to believe. My degree in the 80s required comparative answers on various texts from the course. You would never have read a relevant piece of crit. Plus it’s hard work to read all the crit. Easier to read the books…

Hence the old joke; two teachers talking. "Have you read Ulysses?" "Read it? I've never even taught it!"