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Eyes Without a Face [1]

Fiction [2]
3.2.22

In the latest installment of Craft Capsules [3], Allegra Hyde, author of Eleutheria, forthcoming from Vintage in March, writes about “face pareidolia,” a scientific term for the phenomenon of humans seeing faces in inanimate objects. Hyde finds evidence of this behavior used as a literary technique in a range of works from Homer’s The Odyssey to Alexandra Kleeman’s novel Something New Under the Sun (Hogarth, 2021), in which water is given “a human-like motive, which heightens the drama of the overall description.” This week, write a story that employs the personification, either literal or metaphorical, of an inanimate object. Whether it’s the clouds in the sky or a desk lamp, how does this human impulse to see ourselves help us better understand the world?


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/eyes_without_a_face

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/eyes_without_a_face [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/fiction [3] https://www.pw.org/content/the_face_in_the_whirlpool