Reimagining Ethiopian History: A Gadamerian Reading of Alemayehu Wassie’s Miteralion
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Abstract
This study explores the reimagining of Ethiopian history in contemporary Amharic fiction, focusing on Alemayehu Wassie’s Miteralion (2014), through the theoretical lens of historiographic metafiction and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy. It analyses how the novel reimagines Ethiopian history as a narrative, interpretive, and ethically charged discourse rather than a fixed historical record. Through close textual analysis, the study explores key postmodern strategies, including mythic ancestry, symbolic naming, the reconstruction of sacred geography, and the tragic representation of Emperor Tewodros II within the context of colonial encounters. The findings demonstrate that Miteralion redefines Ethiopian national identity not through biological descent or imperial legitimacy, but through ethical inheritance grounded in wisdom, moral responsibility, and collective memory. By mobilising myth and history as critical tools rather than sources of political legitimation, the novel interrogates the moral failures of the present while reconfiguring the past as a dialogic space of interpretation. This study contributes to Ethiopian literary scholarship and postmodern historiography by highlighting the transformative role of historiographic metafiction in reshaping historical consciousness, national memory, and identity formation in contemporary Amharic fiction.
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References
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