ethopoeia

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἠθοποιία (ēthopoiía). Equivalent to etho- + -poeia.

Why this word is great

ETHOPOEIA — [Noun] A rhetorical technique in which the speaker or author presents an imaginary speech by a real person, portraying that person's known characteristics and propensities. From the Ancient Greek ēthopoiía, combining ethos ("character") and poeia ("representation, making"). Unlike "prosopopoeia" (which conjures voices for the absent or invented) or "ethos" (which merely implies credibility), ethopoeia is an act of disciplined resurrection. It is Cicero's imagined soliloquy on the eve of his assassination, the historian breathing life into Caesar's final whisper, or the novelist giving voice to a long-dead poet's unrecorded grief—each a fragile act of ventriloquism, where the dead speak not as ghosts, but as themselves.

noun

A rhetorical technique in which the speaker or author presents an imaginary speech by a real person, portraying that person's known characteristics and propensities.“The situation envisioned is the contest for a prize described in Herodotus 8.123 and cast in the form of ethopoeia.”
An instance of this technique.“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.”