Personification

Personification is a trope that endows inanimate objects, natural phenomena, abstract concepts or animals with the features, actions and feelings of a living human being: "the willow weeps," "the sun smiled," "the forest whispers." Personification is a variety of metaphor and one of the most ancient ways of the artistic mastery of the world, genetically linked to the mythological, animistic world-view in which all nature was conceived as living. In poetry personification humanises the environment, creating an emotional bond between the human being and the world, while in the fable and the tale it becomes the basis of allegorical images. Extended personification may grow into an integral symbolic image. It is a productive device of the landscape and philosophical lyric of the Ukrainian and world traditions.