pathos

pathos, poignancy, bathos are comparable when they denote the quality found in human situations, or especially in works of art or literature, which moves one to pity or sorrow.

Pathos is the common term in critical and literary use; because of its early and long-continued association with aesthetics it often implies the arousing of emotions which give pleasure rather than pain and it suggests the detachment of an observer rather than personal involvement in the perturbing events or situations

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pathos is the luxury of grief ; and when it ceases to be other than a keen- edged pleasure it ceases to be pathos— Patmore

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Often, also, pathos implies not so much an effect produced on the person who sees, hears, or reads, as the art, device, or trick employed (as by a writer, speaker, or artist) in seeking to produce such an effect

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he passed without an effort from the most solemn appeal to the gayest raillery, from the keenest sarcasm to the tenderest pathos—J. R. Green

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"My poor children, what had I ever done to you that would drive you to such a step?" The touch of pathos was all that Jane needed to stiffen her— Mary Austin

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Poignancy is sometimes preferred by literary and art critics to pathos because it carries no suggestion of artificiality and centers the attention on the genuineness of the thing's emotional quality and of the emotions it arouses; it also specifically implies a power to pierce the mind or heart so that the reader, hearer, or observer feels acutely as well as with aesthetic pleasure the emotion aroused whether it be pity or sorrow or another overwhelming emotion

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the most famous of the women-poets of Japan, whose verse expresses with peculiar poignancy a sense of the glory of beauty and the pathos of it— Binyon

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felt the poignancy of the kakapo's plight and had somehow managed to slip in this intimation of pity for a fellow creature— Tilford

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Bathos is often applied to a false or pretentious pathos and typically implies a maudlin sentimentality so detached from reality as to arouse disgusted contempt rather than the softer emotions that it is intended to elicit

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the poet seeks to render soulfully the blubbering of a happy idiot, and falls into bathos— Ciardi

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But bathos may also apply to a silly and artificially lugubrious reaction to something emotionally appealing that is akin to self-pity

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the voice of God, even at second-hand, should do more than make us sniff moistly in self-indulgent bathos— Hateh

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