ENGL 375 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Pathetic Fallacy, Rigor Mortis, Psychological Projection

• School: Queen's University
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 375
• Professor: Yael Schlick

Document Summary

Choose a poem, in a word discuss the issues and themes it talks about. This poem describes someone with a restless creative spirit, who is always switching between tasks. We get something out of creating and shaping. The person is someone who forgot their handywork because they were always turning to new tasks. The three separate vignettes make us forget one and the other- our attention is sequentially toward different things, so we leave each one behind and forget it as we move on. The poem is narrated so sequentially and in the moment that we follow it blow-by-blow as if we are going on a walk too. The song of the phoebe is a mournful call. This seems like psychological projection where humans project unwanted feelings onto other beings as a defense mechanism. The poem teases us into thinking things in terms of pathetic fallacy.