ETHNOPOETICS 463 Quality Often Shows More Enthusiasm Than Talent

ETHNOPOETICS 463

quality often shows more enthusiasm than talent, but participation in poetry movements, poetic practices dedicated and capable poets are not lacking, even with and activities, and bodies of work that refl ected the limited opportunities to express rebellious ideas. Ethio- lives and aspirations of politically or socioeconomi- pian poetry is usually idealistic, expressing hope for the cally underrepresented members of the world’s many country and encouraging fellow Ethiopians to promote communities, as well as in underrepresented aspects the best interests of their native land. Poets of note in (hidden social hurts and hists., collective origins, and more recent years include Aseff a Gebre-Mariyam Tes- so forth) of more traditionally canonical verse. Most emma (b. ), the author of the national *anthem, broadly, the movement sought to locate poetry and and Aberra Lemma (b. ). the poetic in a global range of utterances and local ex- E. Littmann, Die altamharischen Kaiserlieder (); pressive practices, focusing initially on the collection, Hiruy Welde-Sillasé, Mis’hafe qiné (), and Iné-nna trans., and sometimes emulation by Western (esp. wedajocché (); Mahteme-Sillasé Welde-Mesqel, U.S.) scholars and poets of indigenous verbal artifacts Amarinnya qiné (); M. Kamil, Amharische Kaiser- as “poetry.” Th e intentions were to acknowledge the lieder (); Haddis Alemayyehu, Fiqr iske meqabir cultural and aesthetic sophistication of these expres- (); Habte-Mariyam Werqineh, T’intawî ye-Îtyopiya sions, to introduce the Western literary establishment timhirt (); R. K. Molvaer, Tradition and Change in to these powerful cultural writings, and to declare Ethiopia: Social and Cultural Life as Refl ected in Amharic them equal in signifi cance and achievement to the Fictional Literature ca. – (); Mengistu canon of poetic masterpieces by individuated and re- Lemma, Yegi’iz qinéyat, yenne t’ibeb qirs (); Gebre- vered poets. Major participants in the movement have Igziabiher Elyas and R. K. Molvaer, Prowess, Piety and included Rothenberg and Quasha; anthropologists Politics: Th e Chronicle of Abeto Iyasu and Empress Zew- Dell Hymes, Barbara Tedlock, and Dennis Tedlock ditu of Ethiopia (–) (); R. K. Molvaer, (also a poet and literary trans., of, among other texts, Socialization and Social Control in Ethiopia (); the Mayan Popol Vuh ); linguistics scholar Ulli Beier; “About the Abortive Coup Attempt in Addis Abeba poets Armand Schwerner, Charles Stein, and Nathan- from  Tahsas to  Tahsas  (– December iel Tarn (who also holds a doctorate in anthropology); ),” Northeast African Studies  (); Black Lions: and others who translated, wrote, anthologized, or Th e Creative Lives of Modern Ethiopia’s Literary Giants otherwise edited jours. and books showcasing the tra- and Pioneers (); and “Siniddu Gebru: Pioneer ditional praise songs, incantations, verbal ceremonies, Woman Writer, Feminist, Patriot, Educator, and Poli- or individual poems of indigenous people and poets tician,” Northeast African Studies  (); Ayele Bek- writing with an awareness of their ethnic trads. One erie, Ethiopic: An African Writing System: Its History and of the major tenets of the movement, stated in the fi rst Principles (); R. K. Molvaer, “Th e Achievement of issue of the jour. Alcheringa , a key publication, was Emperor Téwodros II of Ethiopia (–): From “to combat cultural genocide in all of its manifesta- an Unpublished Manuscript by Aleqa Tekle-Îyesus tions” (Rothenberg and Tedlock, ); emphasis on (‘ Aleqa Tekle’) of Gojjam,” Northeast African Studies  the “tribal” as a concept and a specifi c social formation (); “Afewerq Yohannis and Debbebe Seyfu: Notes and of a vatic or bardic understanding of poetics per- on Ethiopian Writers of the Late Twentieth Century,” meates much of the movement’s discourse. Northeast African Studies  (); and “Some Ethio- Critiques of ethnopoetics have arisen in response pian Historical Poems,” Aethiopica  (). to theoretical revisions of both “nationalism/ethnicity” R. K. Molvaer and “poetry”—the two primary components of the neologism. “Nation” has been complicated by ETHNOPOETICS Gr. ethnos , “nation”; and poiēsis , “po stnationalism,” “ethnicity” by “hybridity,” and “po - “creation, a making-process.” Th e term was coined etry” by “poetries” and by critical approaches that do in  by the poet and anthologist Jerome Rothen- not attend to distinctions in genre. Until the late s berg in collaboration with George Quasha as a parallel and s, ethnopoetics primarily consisted of eff orts term to “ethnomusicology.” Th us, to paraphrase a cl. by Western, majority-culture poets and scholars to bring defi nition of the latter, ethnopoetics could be said to globally underrepresented poetries to the attention comprise “the study of social and cultural aspects of of other Western, majority-culture poets and scholars [poetry] in local and global contexts” (Pegg). Ethnopo- under the banner of an avant-garde modernist univer- etics, which emerged in the s and s, gener- salism (ethnopoetics claims kinship with the Western ally refers to the develop. of an interest among poets avant-garde’s attraction to “primitivism”), coupled with and scholars, esp. anthropologists, in () a hypothetical a desire to heal cultural damage. However, some post- worldwide body of poetry, equivalent in value, that in- colonial critics later faulted ethnopoetics for cultural cluded materials heretofore deemed crude, “primitive,” imperialism and a failure to put such works in their ap- or “uncivilized,” such as folk poetry and oral trads., propriate historical and political context. Th e tendency shamanistic incantations, anonymously or collectively of ethnopoetics to fi nd similarities across cultures con- composed works, and other nonliterary verbal events fl icted with the poststructuralist emphasis on diff erence

Copyright © 2012. Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. University Princeton 2012. © Copyright saturated with meaning for their particular cultures; and incommensurability, as well as skepticism about the () the humanistic and expressive value of alternative distinction between oral and written trads. (poetic, e.g.) ethnographic writing; and, in response A wider understanding of ethnopoetics might con- to the decentralization of “highbrow” art in the post- sider the historical and intellectual relationship be-  academic curriculum, () the study of and/or tween ethnography and poetry/poetics, incl. () poetry

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics : Fourth Edition, edited by Stephen Cushman, et al., Princeton University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/upenn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=913846. Created from upenn-ebooks on 2020-02-07 00:32:46. 464 ETHOS

or poetic writing by ethnographers (incl. Ruth Bene- exclusive concentration on formal validity in logos. Al- dict, Renato Rosaldo, Edward Sapir, Michael Taussig, though ethos centers in the speaker and pathos in the Ruth Behar, Susan Stewart, and others) that embodies audience, the force of ethos consists in arousing *emo- or thematizes elements common to both ethnographic tions; and the nature of pathos, or what emotions can and literary inquiry, such as the experience of ling. and be aroused, depends on the character of their host. cultural defamiliarization, the participant-observation Th is conceptually close relation between ethos and method of fi eldwork, cultural documentation, the pathos is evident not only in cl. rhetorical treatises but problem of “self”-positioning, and the ethics and vio- in the long trad. of writing *“characters.” Th is literary lence of representation; () repoliticized scholarship genre, comprised of short disquisitions on personality and creative work by indigenous or ethnic subjects types and behaviors, originated with Aristotle’s pupil and communities about themselves that portray their Th eophrastus and achieved high popularity in the Ren. own complexity as not merely tribal or ethnic but also Th e devel. of “humoral psychology” and such works as cosmopolitan, hybrid, or multi-infl uenced aesthetic as Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour further re- and social agents; and () continued exploration of veal the traditionally close union of ethos and pathos “cultural poetics” as a valid mode of scholarly inquiry, (see humors). From the standpoint of rhet., ethos in and the need for social engagement in poetic praxis. poetry bears obvious relations to *persona and autho- Critical Studies : Modern Poetry from Africa , ed. U. rial identity: ethos is, in sum, the strategic rationale Beier and G. Moore (); Technicians of the Sa- of both, a determinant of the audience’s response to cred , ed. J. Rothenberg, d ed. (), and Shaking the speaker or speakers in a text as well as to the artist the Pumpkin (); J. Rothenberg and D. Ted- as speaker of a text, investing the latter speaking role lock, “Statement of Intention,” Alcheringa  (); with something of the ethos-driven quality of auctori- R. Finnegan, Oral Poetry (); D. Tedlock, Th e tas , famously described by Virgil as belonging to that Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation (); orator who, “infl uential in piety and deeds,” can rule Symposium of the Whole, ed. J. Rothenberg (with D. the ignoble mob with words (Aeneid .–). Among Rothenberg) (); M. Taussig, Mimesis and Alter- mod. critics, ethos has fi gured in the discussion of such ity (); B. Tedlock, Th e Beautiful and the Dan- subjects as the distinction between dramatized and gerous (); S. Stewart, On Longing (); Poems undramatized speakers, or between dramatic *mono- for the Millennium, ed. J. Rothenberg and P. Joris, logues and *lyric poems, as well as in discussions of the  v. (–); S. Hartnett and J. Engels, “ ‘Aria morality of impersonal narration and the character of in Time of War’: Investigative Poetics and the Politics implied authors. of Witnessing,” in Th e SAGE Handbook of Qualitative See rhetoric and poetry . Research, ed. N. Denzin and Y. Lincoln (); M. M. Joseph, Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts of Language Taussig, Walter Benjamin’s Grave (); K. Stewart, (), ch. , ; G. T. Wright, Th e Poet in the Poem Ordinary Aff ects (). (); E. Schütrümpf, Die Bedeutung des Wortes Journals : Alcheringa ; A Gathering of the Tribes ; éthos in der Poetik des Aristoteles (); Group , Cultural Anthropology ; XCP: Cross-cultural Poetics ; ch. ; S. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning (); Tropiques . W. Booth, Th e Rhetoric of Fiction , d ed. (); Web Sites : C. Pegg, “Ethnomusicology,” Grove Music C. Gill, “Th e Ethos/Pathos Distinction in Rhetorical Online , ed. L. Macy, http://www.grovemusic.com; and Literary Criticism,” CQ  (); W. Booth, Th e UbuWeb: Ethnopoetics, http://www.ubu.com/ethno. Company We Keep (); J. M. May, Trials of Char- M. Damon acter: Th e Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos (); Cor- bett, esp. –; E. Schütrumpf, “Th e Model for the ETHOS (Gr., “custom,” “character”). In cl. rhet., one Concept of Ethos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” Philologus means of persuasion: an audience’s assessment of a  (); Lausberg; Ethos et pathos: Le statut du sujet speaker’s moral character (e.g., honesty, benevolence, rhétorique, ed. F. Cornilliat and R. Lockwood (); intelligence) primarily as refl ected in the discourse, al- R. Amossy, “Ethos at the Crossroads of Disciplines: though at least secondarily dependent on the speaker’s Rhetoric, Pragmatics, Sociology,” PoT  (); prior reputation. In the Rhetoric :a, Aristotle dis- F. Woerther, “Aux origines de la notion rhétorique d’ tinguishes three ways of achieving persuasion: ethical ‘èthos,’ ” Revue des Études Greques  (); D. Ran- (ethos ), emotional (*pathos ), and logical ( logos ); and dall, “Ethos, Poetics, and the Literary Public Sphere,” although he comes close to affi rming ethos as the MLQ  (). most potent means of persuasion, he gives it the least T. O. Sloane theoretical devel.; that devel. must for the most part be traced outside rhet., in the works of moral philoso- EUPHONY (Gr., “good sound”). Euphony, particu- phers on virtue. From the standpoint of education, larly in dramatic works and poetry, is a smoothness and however, ethos became historically the most widely ad- harmony of sounds that are agreeable to the ear and dressed principle of rhet., as theorists from the Soph- pleasing in the physical act of pronouncing them or in

Copyright © 2012. Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. rights All Press. University Princeton 2012. © Copyright ists through the Ren. humanists made the study of the mental act of their unvoiced performance. ethics a central means of preparing students for civic John Milton begins his elegiac “Lycidas” with eu- responsibilities. Along with pathos, ethos serves to dis- phony’s engaging calmness, “Yet once more, O ye Lau- tinguish rhet.’s inclusive concerns from dialectic’s more rels, and once more, / Ye Myrtles brown, with ivy never

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics : Fourth Edition, edited by Stephen Cushman, et al., Princeton University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/upenn-ebooks/detail.action?docID=913846. Created from upenn-ebooks on 2020-02-07 00:32:46.