ethopoeia

plural ethopoeiae · plural ethopoeias · alternative ethopoiia

1. rhetoricuncountableA rhetorical technique in which the speaker or author presents an imaginary speech by a real person, portraying that person's known characteristics and propensities.

   In ancient narrative literature, ethopoeia is a frequently used literary tool.

   2014, Koen De Temmerman, Crafting Characters: Heroes and Heroines in the Ancient Greek Novel, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   The situation envisioned is the contest for a prize described in Herodotus 8.123 and cast in the form of ethopoeia.

   2003, George Alexander Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, →ISBN, page 165

   This is a reference to a type of drama-based pedagogy called ethopoeia, which formed a central component of the humanist grammar school curriculum.

   2015, David S. Thompson, Theatre Symposium, Vol. 23: Theatre and Youth, →ISBN, page 43

2. countablerhetoricAn instance of this technique.

   One of the most elaborate extant examples of this genre is a speech by Libanius, an ethopoeia of Medea as she is about to kill her children.

   2012, Irene Peirano, The Rhetoric of the Roman Fake, →ISBN, page 258

   3 more examples

   In their ethopoeias of the ideal lover, de la Torre, Ribera, and Luduefia emphasize, as we have seen, eloquence, good physical proportions, youth, elegance, discretion and honesty.

   1976, E. Michael Gerli, Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, →ISBN, page 115

   The speeches in the De Gelesuintha all can be described as ethopoeiae, that is speeches intended to communicate the emotional condition of their speakers.

   2001, Ralph W. Mathisen, Danuta Shanzer, Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul, page 302

   An ethopoeia is delimited by some few arguments from past, present, and future time, while exhortation, as an hypothesis dealing with acknowledged particulars, takes its amplification from final headings.

   2003, George Alexander Kennedy, Progymnasmata, →ISBN