PERSONIFICATION

Author's Comments

Personification comes from the Greek word, prosopopoeia meaning a figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting as one of the many tropes used in literature. It assigns human characteristics, traits and qualities to non-humans and objects. These attributes may include sensations, emotions, desires, physical gestures, expressions, and powers of speech, just to mention a few. Personification must not be confused with other tropes such as pathetic fallacy, apostrophe or anthropomorphism.

Pathetic fallacy is broader and more allusive. Though personification is very similar to it, the difference comes because personification is more direct and explicit in the ascription of life and sentience to non-humans and objects.

Apostrophe entails not speaking about, but speaking to, a personified entity or an absent person.

All these aforementioned tropes should be understood as separate from anthropomorphism, an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human and personal characteristics. In short, the humanization of non-humans and objects.

John Keat's "To Autumn", the fall season is a good example of the personification technique used in poetry. My modest attempt at applying this technique is found in one of my poems, "Pompous Trees Speak Out". In the poem the trees are personified as having the facility of speech spurting from a mouth puffed up with vanity.