Tiieme and Style in Kebede Mikael's Creative Works
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Date
1995-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Kebede Mikael is one of the prominent literary figures in the history of Amharic
literature. As he is a prolific writer, his works deal with \'arious aspects of the life
of the society such as love of motherland, education, art and others. He is also one
of the pioneers who attempted to bring to the level of perfection the 6/ 6 metre of
Amharic versification.
The objective of this research is, therefore, to study the works of this writer and
place him and his works in historical perspective: to be specific, it is to examine the
theme and the style and to evaluate his contribution to the development of Ahmaric
literature. At the beginning a literature review and a brief biography of the poetplaywright
are given in order to find out what research has been done so far and
to provide some background information to the reader of this thesis.
In the first chapter an attempt has been made to categorize and analyze how the
poet-playwright presents his themes. He deals mainly with the love of one's
motherland, religion, art, time, life, death, chance and fate, morality, money, and
education. An attempt is also made to show how his up-bringing and his reading
of classical works influenced his writing and how these are reflected in his creative
works.The investigation of the style of the se lected poems and plays is what the second
chapter consists of. Here the features of Kebede's dramatic monologue are fully
elaborated. In the poems singled out for this study he uses the styles that Cicero
identified as "plain", "middle", and "vigorous". In his versification, particularly in his
rhyming, two points stand out clearly. First, his special use of sounds such as
consonance and assonance which create special effects to amplify the themes.
Second, unlike Thomas L. Kane's observation, the research reveals that Kebede also
makes use of the ab ab pattern of rhyming scheme in his poetry.
The last chapter presents the overall contribution of Kebede Mikael. His
contribution to Amharic versification, his experimentation in Amharic play-writing,
as well as his production of teaching materials are all examined and commented
upon; followed by the conclusion which summarizes the main findings of the
research.
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Keywords
Creative Works