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IMAGES OF ABBAY (THE BLUE NILE) IN AMHARIC WRITTEN POETRY [Abstract ID: 1211-04]
Rivers in the world command the attention of hosts of poets. Some, especially, get more attention than the others. The River Abbay (The Blue Nile) is one of those foremost rivers that captures the imagination and fascination of not only the local poets, but also the international ones. The Abbay has also been at the heart of the country’s politics and economy. This study aspires to analyze the dominate images attributed to this river and the underlying motives behind such metaphoric conceptualizations as reflected in the selected Amharic poems by relating it to major water resource related events of the Nile. The study, thus, incorporates poems written before and after the commencement of GERD, for this Dam is believed to have significant implications on how the Ethiopian societies view the Abbay. Poetry is a socio-cultural product, and as such, it can be taken as an important repository of background material providing context for understanding major historical, political and economic developments of a given country. To this end, the study employs the Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004). Consequently, the study identifies three dominant conceptual metaphors depicting the Abbay. These are: 1. metaphors that apotheosize the Abbay; 2. Metaphors that anthropomorphize the Abbay in which it is conceptualized as a friendly and villainous person in different times in its history; and 3. Metaphors that romanticize the Abbay which depicted it as one drawing its beauty from the Land of Ethiopia. The overarching findings that the study draw are that the Abbay in Ethiopia constitutes the fabric of society and the local poets felt a deep connection to it and associated it with their countries' national interest.