From ‘Pathetic Fallacy’ to Affective Attunement: Reading Virgil’s Eclogues through the Lens of Material Ecocriticism

Inspired by growing trends of reevaluating ancient literary works in the light of current environmental crises, this study offers a rereading of a pastoral classic, Virgil’s Eclogues. It discusses the work’s occurrences of ‘pathetic fallacy’ regarding their ecocritical merit. While traditional understandings of this literary device determine it to be primarily a (mis)attribution of human emotions to natural objects, this article argues that, through the lens of material ecocriticism, its productivity lies elsewhere: it informs the reader about conceptions of human-nonhuman connectedness while encouraging affective attunements between humans and the environment.