Guide to Literary Terms | Affective Fallacy

Affective fallacy - the error of judging a literary work by its emotional effect upon readers or a confusion between the work itself and its results.

The term comes from combining two words: affective, which means pertaining to emotional effects or natures, and fallacy, which means false or mistaken idea.

Affect was a Middle English word taken from the Middle French affaire, meaning “to influence;” affaire was derived from the Latin afficere, which was formed by joining ab and facere, meaning “to do.” Fallacy is from the Latin fallacia, which was derived from fallac- or fallax, meaning “deceitful.” These terms were originally from fallere, meaning “to deceive.”

In essence, avoidance of the affective fallacy demonstrates an attempt to create objective literary criticism, in which the critic is concerned with describing the rhetorical composition of a work— how it functions — rather than with describing the impact of a work — what it does — on the reader.

see: catharsis