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The aim of the paper is to explore the cognitive value of certain literary works through the notion of “ ethopoiia” (moral mimesis or a portrait based on custom and behavior). Originally a rhetorical notion, ethopoiia can be expanded to signify an interdisciplinary literary genre, situated at the ideal interface between literature and knowledge. It can be practiced by any of the ""moral sciences"" (history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.) and approaches human reality through the phenomenological representation of ethos (character/custom/ morality, both individual and collective). Having outlined the theoretical framework of ethopoiia, we retrace its development though several milestones of the Western ""moral"" tradition, from Aristotle and Theophrastus to the realist novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. In doing so, we emphasize the continuities and discontinuities that characterize the tradition, as well as the relationships between literature and the social sciences.