John Ruskin

Rushkin invented the term “pathetica fallacy,” so if you see it on the exam, you’ll know you’re looking at Ruskin.In literary criticism, the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human emotions, thoughts, sensations, and feelings.

Examples of the pathetic fallacy include:
* “The stars will awaken / Though the moon sleep a full hour later” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
* “The fruitful field / Laughs with abundance” (William Cowper)
* “Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty” (Walt Whitman)
* “Nature abhors a vacuum” (John Ruskin’s translation of the well-known Medieval saying natura abhorret a vacuo, in his work Modern Painters.)