Pathos in Greek meant the passions, or suffering, or deep feeling generally,
as distinguished from ethos, a person's overall disposition or character.
In modern criticism, however, pathos is applied in a much more limited way to
a scene or passage that is designed to evoke the feelings of tenderness, pity, or
sympathetic sorrow from the audience.
In the Victorian era a number of
prominent writers exploited pathos beyond the endurance of many readers
today—examples are the rendering of the death of Little Nell in Charles Dick-
ens' The Old Curiosity Shop and of the death of Little Eva in Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
To many modern readers, the
greatest passages do not dwell on the details of suffering but achieve the effect of pathos by understatement and suggestion.
Examples are the speech of King Lear when he is briefly reunited with Cordelia,
Pray, do not mock me.
I am a very foolish fond old man,
and William Wordsworth's terse revelation of the grief of the old father for the loss of his son in Michael (1800).
Many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone.
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