A stylistic model of the converse of pathetic fallacy

Abstract

This paper builds on Pager-McClymont’s model of pathetic fallacy to show how its converse can equally impact narratives and readers’ or viewers’ perspective of texts. The link between pathetic fallacy and its converse is established, and an identification method is provided. Examples from literature and multimodal texts are provided to explore how the converse of pathetic fallacy is featured in texts and the effects it can have on narratives, especially characterisation. With the use of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, findings show that the mappings good is dark and bad is light (the reverse of the known conceptual metaphors good is light and bad is dark) are prevalent in several instances of PF’s converse, rendering them non-novel mappings despite the lack of research surrounding them.