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Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

Foreshadowing events using weather?

Sometimes writers use the weather in order to foreshadow events which will later take place in the novel. What is the literary term for this technique?
Thank you :smile:
Reply 1
Avatar for cpj1987
cpj1987
15
Pathetic Fallacy?
Reply 2
Avatar for Jingers
Jingers
15
Why it's called pathetic fallacy rather than prophetic fallacy I'll never know...
Reply 3
Avatar for cpj1987
cpj1987
15
Jingers
Why it's called pathetic fallacy rather than prophetic fallacy I'll never know...


Because it always rains in stories.:frown:
Is there any term other than pathetic fallacy? I came across one a long while ago, and I can't for the life of me remember it. If anybody has any ideas I'd appreciate it :smile:
Reply 5
Avatar for evantej
evantej
18
The pathetic fallacy is used incorrectly in this context since it is an action that 'attributes human feelings and actions to natural objects'. Even when you want to disprove the pathetic fallacy you simply have to say that the action being described is metaphorical; Coleridge's leaf 'that dances as often as dance it can' - Ruskin would say that leaves cannot dance so it is fallacious. So why not simply say the weather is used metaphorically?

If you wanted to be more precise then I suppose you could say the weather is an extended metaphor (conceit; though even this implies a particular poetic context), and is used narratologically to foreshadow events later in the text. Again, it depends on the texts you are looking at, but you could also consider talking about the writer's use of figurative imagery (or motif or trope), though I would avoid doing this if you do not know how metaphors function (tenor and vehicle).
Reply 6
Avatar for Somoxc
Somoxc
1
Pathetic as in pathos. It simply reflects the emotion of a character or the turn of events. Prophetic Fallacy does have a nice ring to it, though.

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