The effectiveness of hypothesis in literary research A New Approach to Personification as a Literary Device based on Suggestive Appearance (animism) and Context

Literary critics have different views about personification as a literary device. Some have considered personification as a sub-branch of the makniye (implicit) metaphor, defining it as attributing human traits and emotions to objects, natural phenomena, and concepts. That is to say, using imagination, the poet describes those things as human beings. In this definition, the mind and imaginative power of the poet in exploring the similarities of those objects and personifying them are of great importance.Some have regarded it as a category of ontological metaphors and imaginal deviation, in which the poet conceives identification of two independent and separate things and thereby ascribes human activities, emotions, and thoughts to them. In fact, through personification, various entities, having never been compared up to now, are juxtaposed to cause artistic effects.Other critics believe in the principle of animism and suggestive appearance. They maintain that there are two mental approaches to animism: the "mythological" approach and the "psychological" approach. In the mythological approach, animism is a part of mythology. That is, having childlike fanciful mental activities, primitive simple-minded man believes everything in nature has a living soul or soulmate. Psychologically speaking, animism is a kind of return to childhood.  The child's view of the world as an animate thing is one of the fundamental questions in psychology which was set forth both in Piaget’s theory of animism and Werner’s theory of physiognomic perception.Accordingly, some modern semiologists like Derrida, Levi Strauss, and Lacan believe that trope, metaphor (personification), majaz-e morsal (synecdoche), and irony belong to the realm of semiotics. They maintain that rhetorical techniques are not merely ornamental materials of style but they are, in the general sense of the word, structural components of discourse. In other words, treating metaphor as a meaning-generating factor, without reference to intertextual relations and structural layers of the text is impossible. What is important in the latter definition is that metaphor is a literary device whose meaning depends on the context in which it is utilized. To put it simply, a separate combination of words may be perceived as a makniye (implicit) metaphor, whereas it could be something quite different in the context. The same is true of personification.According to what is said and based on literary animism and suggestive appearance (third view), context, and structural layers of the text (fourth view), the writer believes that objects and phenomena, like humans, are animate and have their own feelings and emotions. This idea has been widely reflected in the Qur’an, hadiths, and literary works. On the other hand, context and structural layers of the text are good criteria that play an important role in recognizing personification. More precisely, it is from context and overall intertextual relations of the text that one can differentiate between personification and other similar literary devices.