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

The terms are rarely required. I like this one as its origin amuses me.
There's a trend at GCSE to use unnecessarily complex Greek terms for techniques. It achieves nothing unless you explore the effect.
But terminology can be quizzed and tested easily. Which is quite the educational trend at the moment. A lot of English is extended responses that don't lend themselves to quizzing.

Because most of us were trying to work out what Joseph was saying...

It's not even modern by the definition of AQA (An Inspector Calls is NOT a modern text). It's from the 19th century.

Yes it is certainly a Thing.
I remember a book I was recommended by my A Level English teacher "A Reader's Guide to Literary Terms" which I found enormously useful during my Eng Lit degree (I am 65 so a long time ago)

I hadn't heard the term until today, but my bookcase feels quite sad that I am being "a bit thick again" (her words). 😮

Same! Born 1984. Never heard of this term and loved English lessons at school so I’n sure it would ring a bell, even if I didn’t remember what it meant. Maybe it was taken out of the curriculum for a while

Am a PhD creative writing/lit student and hadn’t come across it either, but a quick google explains it’s just a term for a type of personification of inanimate objects (the wind howled as if in pain etc).

I meant modern as in post-classical.

Nope. Was there the all time. Not all teachers teach all techniques though.
And some teach them slightly wrong as well.

I'd never heard of any of these literary terms until I started doing 11+ prep with DS1.

Did make me wonder exactly what they taught me at secondary.

@GrammarTeacher I was replying to @Changingname1988.

I was born in 1988. If @Changingname1988 and I studied A Level English at the same time it's possible it wasn't on the syllabus if neither of us can remember it.

It’s in every movie and tv show

Yeah this was covered when I did English GCSE 15ish years ago

That's probably sympathetic landscape 🤐

Well, it isn't classical or medieval...!

Me too - when I got to uni around 1990 to do a BA in Eng Lit I discovered there were huge gaps in my comprehensive school education - I never really understood the nuts and bolts of grammar tenses, for example, until recently which has made trying to master a foreign language a real challenge, but all my private school educated peers did (they’d been taught latin etc). Not sure it has huge relevance in the workplace though, so can understand why it hasn’t been prioritised in the past. Still, means I still learn something new most days!

I have a UK degree in English Literature (I studied in the 90s) and I haven't heard this term either.

It’s not “on the curriculum” so to speak (the curriculum isn’t as rigid as that), it’s just an example of a literary device. There will be others that are taught; juxtaposition, symbolism, metaphors, etc. Pathetic fallacy is just one of many that can be used and discussed. So the chances are some people were taught about it and others weren’t

Yeah I learned this in media studies when I was 14/15. I think it's a fun term and I often use it! I think it's quite common in the uk to be taught it at some point during your education.

40 year old UK.
I learnt/became aware of it at school but not for a specific novel etc, just one of those things you pick up- tbh I expect more from talking about film tropes.

I would expect it to be pretty commonly known in the UK but probably somewhere on the same level as terms like 'soliloquy' or 'iambic pentameter' etc - so not 100% of people would know, but anyone you'd think of as 'reasonably well educated' would.

I did Macbeth at GCSE and Lear at A-level, then two humanities degrees and I've never heard of this term! How?! It's fabulous and I will spend the rest of today thinking of examples. Thanks, OP!

Born 1974, did English literature at A level and degree level. Never heard it once.

So it's just a coincidence that a few of us who were born in the mid to late 80s and studied English weren't aware of this term?

Another one who hasn’t heard this term. I studied King Lear at A level and we definitely talked about the symbolism of weather but the term pathetic fallacy wasn’t used. I wondered if I had just forgotten but I’ve just dug out my copy of KL with all my scribbled notes and no mention of that term at all despite lots of notes about the symbolism of the storm.

Did A level mid/late 90s.

Yes,

I remember it from school days and I can remember not really liking it because I didn't like the term - didn't like pathetic or fallacy and felt it could have a much more logical, intuitive name.

Another one I struggled with was "sympathetic".

I can remember in GSCE English characters being described as "not a very sympathetic character" to mean they were unlikeable.

Whereas I would have thought that it meant they were lacking in sympathy to others.

I still struggle with that usage of sympathetic.