ethos definition english literature

ethos definition english literature

Exploring the Concept of Ethos in English Literature

1. Introduction to Ethos in English Literature

Ethos in that character claims his justice. Someone is on the side of moderate justice and promotes it before all, overcoming the ego of justice before it and ideally idealizing it before it. The orator or writer has achieved the status of ethos through the speech or literary work and, ultimately, true oratory and writings that lead to that status have been achieved. It is precisely as a habit, ethos is a concept explained in the function of showing in oratory, a broad meaning. Since it is the ego of practical reason and the connection of all with cosmos, it is common to overcome oneself even while serving oneself. Ethos is an element that reveals someone’s personality in relation to others by showing the conscience and proper behavior that one should have in the social role that belongs to them. In principle, the concept of “ethos” is the same for both speeches and literary works. However, it seems natural to compare the trend that is inevitably one-sided or more likely to present iconoclasticism in one of the two aspects, between those who are directed to “speech” and referring to those who are directed to “literature”.

In the classical treatments, “ethos” means a habit or mental constituent constituted of a disposition. In the context of speeches or literature, “ethos” is a habit that an orator or a writer manifests himself in order to conform himself to listeners or readers. This is someone who keeps the mental disposition before those to be persuaded through speeches or literary works. It is called an epiphenomenon in the dialogical and sociological character. In speeches or literature, someone tries to win hearts or exercise some characteristic roles to help realize these intentions. Someone establishes a mutually suitable relationship with those to be persuaded as an immediate character in a social situation consisting of revealing or manifesting these mental dispositions.

2. Historical Development and Evolution of Ethos in Literature

Literary structure is the structure of spirit proposed by Hegel in The Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel says his concern is “the time of atoms knots” or the temporal history of atoms’ consciousness through the voyage of consciousness. In other words, the real theme of literature is the narratives about generic spiritual development and criteria of social values. For Hegel, the true history is the spiritual history that embraces emperors, commoners, and philosophers. We can thus stipulate that ethos is a specific cultural construction in literature.

Literature is, to some extent, a kind of fiction, and at the same time, it is the general moral principle. Particularly, it implies rich emotions, semi-scientific proverbs, partial limitation, some knowledge of philosophical categories, richness in life experience and intuition, theories, and neglects. Bacon firmly believes that literature should not only maintain sentiments but also conform to contemporary truth. It should not only make them laugh and cry but also develop the mental and moral excellence of human beings through the improvement in humor. Therefore, literature is the domain that makes the noble man, and it is also the important manifestation and guarantee of ethos.

As a matter of fact, applicative ethos and hypothetical ethos in the fictional world are not only closely bound up with each other but also closely connected with the social ethos. As a result, an in-depth exploratory study is essential for understanding the manufacturing laws and artistic value of ethos in fictional literature.

In the domain of ancient arts, or what Bacon calls “the wet ethics,” the concept of ethos is a commonly studied philosophy that has been implanted in classical thought. Ethos means culture, ideology, or the system of moral patterns for individuals or society, or the typical feature or general spirit of music, art, literature, politics, and nation. However, ethos makes an important mark in literature studies. Beyond the traditional interpretation, we would like to explore the constitutive characteristic and functional form of ethos in fictional literature, a world detached from objective fact.

3. Key Theories and Interpretations of Ethos in English Literature

It suggests that when the respective verses were written or translated into English, the term ethos may have been employed, in different ways and with different meanings, to attract the attention of the various kinds of readers who, in early modern England, were interested in such literary publications. The chapter examines a series of representative poetic texts, authors, and genres and studies them from several different non-exclusive angles. All are related to the malleability of the cardinal properties assigned by the ancients, and by decisive passages of the great treatises on ethics, to the term ethos. Ethos has to do with the taming of sexual desire and controlling this natural urge with reason and appetite, which are common to humans and other animals. Ethos rejects the division of the Good and the just, as well as the Good and the useful, as the ancient pagans and other non-Christian philosophers had done before and after the Ancient Greeks.

This chapter illustrates the key theories and interpretations of ethos in English literature. It provides a critical overview of the concept and formulates a list of its basic properties. It does this by discussing a heterogeneous sample of relevant poetic texts ranging from Shakespeare, Jonson, Carew, and others to Pope, Spenser, Herbert, and Brooke, among others. These were written or published during the first three quarters of the seventeenth century. The chapter outlines the ancient Greek and Roman roots of the term ethos, explaining how and why it has been used ever since to express a number of properties, states, and qualities ranging from the routines of character, the inclinations of temperament, the states of mind, physique, emotions, and the social manners of individuals or social groups.

4. Ethos in Different Literary Genres and Movements

The ethos becomes a reflection of the moral values of society at a particular historical moment in the historical and literary process. And it speaks quite obligedly to the flexibility of adapting to cultural change by finding its legitimate place in modern society and coming within the field of study of literary linguistics, as it is not separated from the external and internal factors of development in the literary process. Additionally, each genre or movement has a different characteristic ethos, or ethos modified by specific strategies. The present article just elaborates on the ethos in different genres and movements, such as literary prose, the novel, traditional and modern styles. But it is just the beginning of the sphere of literary linguistics research.

Indeed, the ethos as a quality and characteristic of the literary nature is not only versatile but also multifaceted, both with universal appearance and characteristic features in different genres, in different literary movements, and with different authors. Ethos in texts of literary content is expressed through discrete component characteristics such as the personality of the narrator, involvement in the action, emotional states of dramatized characters, the author’s point of view, the focused self-image (the image of the ideal self), overcoming self-limits, the influence on the addressee, and actions guided by ethical norms and values. The artistic device which expresses the ethos always means a convergence and coexistence of multiple levels of style, when it is about such a medley as the literary text is as an object of study, indeed.

5. Contemporary Relevance and Future Directions of Ethos Studies in English Literature

The ethic is but one of the logoi with which poetry fills the soul. While it may not always be coexistent with the basis of the true utility, it is indispensable when poetry hurls itself against the permeability of life. Ethical discourses about the aesthetic have long since receded to beyond-theory. The energy of literature is aesthetic, not ethical, and the moral and political/aesthetic accounts of it never rub elbows. Philosophical literary discourses find that such a brushing would reveal the layering of the affective, conceptual, emotional, intuitional and other between in the spaces, depths and thicknesses of that surface over which poles address one another in eternal repulsion. Especially in virtue of the fact that there is a politics experiment in which we can trace how ethics and politics tell two different stories about their fusion.

While ethos may not always or necessarily be the philosophical substructure of earlier English literary texts, its complex and polarized role within them has often favored inquiries which bring the ethical to the fore. And when such inquiries are carried out, ethos usually is interpreted in narrow and modern senses, with a corresponding though implicit skepticism toward the interpretive priority of other senses of poetic power. The complex legacy of the ethical within English literary texts is channeled along another interpretive tradition, in which advocatory and hermeneutic practices stem from the very roots of Western literary interpretive activity. Elders attempt to rid non-mimetic texts of their façades and mimic bodies no longer fits our late-modern paradigm of critical interpretation; we need to reconsider the comprehensive and polarized history of English literary ethos, within literary reflection in Western history.