Minda, Mekonnen2021-03-152023-11-092021-03-152023-11-091995-01http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/25493Kebede 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.en-USCreative WorksThesis