A. Bouazza: Last week I intended to post
the following compilation in response to Jansy’s query regarding VN’s use of
pathetic fallacy. It is highly selective and gleaned from the novels only, but
purports to show that this stylistic feature of VN’s did not wane with the
passing of time, i.e. from Ada onward, including the posthumous
unfinished The Original of Laura.
Jansy Mello: Thanks, AB, for the
efficient examples of "pathetic fallacy," focusing precisely on objects
(latticed hallery, notice-board, clock, flame, trees and tree trunks, trail,
novel). And the maddened crickets and that jazzband down there....I looked
up "pathetic fallacy" and this encompassing term resulted very helpful.*.I
see that what I had in mind, at first, were instances of "anthropomorfism" or
"animism," whereas "personification"refers to abstractions. It's still a
bit complicated to extrincate each from the animated corpus of VN's
paragraphs, but I'll work on it!
..........................................................
*
WIKI: In the critical discussion of literature and criticism of the Arts,
the pathetic fallacy is akin toAnthropomorphism (ascribing humanity to animals),
to Personification (ascribing personal, human qualities to
an abstraction), and to Animism (ascribing a soul all animate and
inanimate things).
The
term Pathetic fallacy was coined by the 19th-century cultural critic John
Ruskin, who introduced and used the term in the book Modern Painters (1856), as an expression of æsthetic judgement, and the disapproval of
excessive sentiment in the execution of a work of art; yet, the pathetic fallacy
occasionally is countered by the poetic license exercised by the
artist.