The phrase pathetic fallacy is the literary term for a attribution of human emotion and keep on to matters found in manner that are non human. it is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, cloudssullen, when leaves dance, or when rocksindifferent. The British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in Volume 3 of his work, Modern Painters 1856.
Ruskin coined the term pathetic fallacy to attack the sentimentality that was common to the poetry of the late 18th century, & which was rampant among poets including Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, together with Keats. Wordsworth supported this usage of personification based on emotion by claiming that "objects ... derive their influence non from properties inherent in them ... but from such(a) 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 reorder and diminish such(a) expressions, and exposed an emphasis on what might be called a more scientific comparison of objects in terms of sense perception. The old format was beginning to be replaced by the new just as Ruskin addressed the matter, and the ownership of the pathetic fallacy markedly began to disappear. As a critic, Ruskin proved influential and is credited with having helped to restyle poetic expression.
The meaning of the term has changed significantly from the concepts 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 grown-up is unhinged by grief, the clouds mightdarker than they are, or perhaps mournful or perhaps even uncaring.
There make-up been other changes to Ruskin's phrase since he coined it: The particular definition that Ruskin used for the word fallacy has since become obsolete. The word nowadays is defined as an example of flawed reasoning, but for Ruskin and writers of the 19th century and earlier, fallacy could be used to mean simply a 'falseness'. In the same way, the word pathetic simply meant for Ruskin 'emotional' or 'pertaining to emotion'.
Setting aside Ruskin's original intentions, and despite this linguistic 'rocky road', the two-word phrase has survived, though with a significantly altered meaning.