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Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 3: Literatures PDF

207 Pages·1985·26.545 MB·English
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Preview Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 3: Literatures

SUPPLEMENT TO THE HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIANS Volume 3 Literatures THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK SUPPLEMENT TO THE HANDBOOK OF MIDDLE AMERICAN INDIANS VICTORIA REIFLER BRICKER, General Editor VOLUME THREE LITERATURES MUNRO S. EDMONSON, Volume Editor With the Assistance of Patricia A. Andrews U N I V E R S I TY OF T E X AS P R E S S, A U S T IN Copyright © 1985 Reprinted by permission of the Smithsonian In- by the University of Texas Press stitution Press from Smithsonian Contributions to All rights reserved Anthropology, No. 19 (1975), The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of San Lorenzo Zinacantán, p. 17; Requests for permission to reproduce material No. 23 (1977), Of Cabbages and Kings, pp. 372- from this work should be sent to: 373; No. 25 (1980), Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Permissions Wax, pp. 208, 215-216; all by Robert Laughlin. Box 7819 Austin, Texas 78713 Grateful acknowledgment is also made to the fol- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING lowing for permission to reprint previously pub- IN PUBLICATION DATA lished material as cited in the text: Cambridge Main entry under title: University Press for material from Ethnography of Literatures. Speaking; Harvard University Press for material (Supplement to the Handbook of Middle Ameri- from Chamulas in the World of the Sun; Instituto can Indians ; v. 3) de Asesoría Antropológica para la Región Maya, Bibliography: p. Asociación Civil, for material from a Writers' 1. Indian literature—Mexico—Addresses, es- Workshop program pamphlet; Instituto de Inves- says, lectures. 2. Indian literature—Central tigaciones Históricas for material from Tlalocan; America—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Ed- Mouton and Co. for material from Meaning in monson, Munro S. II. Andrews, Patricia A. Mayan Languages; Princeton University Library III. Series. for material from the Robert Garrett Collection of PM3051.L57 1985 897'.4 85-3361 Manuscripts in the Indigenous Languages of ISBN 0-292-77593-8 Middle America. To our eagles flying One sleep ahead THELMA D. SULLIVAN FERNANDO HORCASITAS ALFREDO BARRERA VÁSQUEZ THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK CONTENTS General Editors Preface ix Victoria Reifler Bricker 1. Introduction 1 Munro S. Edmonson 2. Nahuatl Literature 7 Miguel León-Portilla 3. Yucatecan Mayan Literature 44 Munro S. Edmonson and Victoria R. Bricker 4. Tzotzil Literature 64 Gary H. Gossen 5. Quiche Literature 107 Munro S. Edmonson 6. Cyclical Patterns in Chorti (Mayan) Literature 133 John Fought Bibliography 147 Index 171 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK GENERAL E D I T O RS PREFACE The aboriginal literatures of Middle America have enough recorded examples to permit received little attention as such in the Hand- description of their genres and styles. We book of Middle American Indians. An article hope that the treatment of literatures in this on the Precolumbian literatures was tucked volume will give ethnographers and linguists away in one of five archaeological volumes the incentive to collect texts representing the (M. León-Portilla 1971). Narrative folklore full range of functional categories so that in was assigned to the social anthropology vol- the future there will be sufficient information ume (Edmonson 1967). And bibliographic on the literatures of other Middle American chapters on native prose sources appeared in languages to justify additional volumes with the last of four ethnohistorical volumes (Gib- this theme. son 1975; Gibson and Glass 1975). While Our decision to devote a volume of the useful and informative, the treatment of the Supplement to the Handbook of Middle native literatures of Middle America could American Indians entirely to literatures coin- not, in the space allotted to it in the Hand- cides with an increasing interest in this sub- book, even begin to do justice to the richness ject in the scholarly community. The first and variety of the verbal arts in the region. issue of a new journal, Latin American In- In this volume, we sample that richness dian Literatures, appeared in 1977, and the and variety by considering, at greater length first annual meeting of LAILA/ALILA (Latin than was possible in the Handbook, litera- American Indian Literatures Association/ tures representing five Middle American In- Asociación de literaturas indígenas latino- dian languages: Nahuatl, Yucatecan Maya, americanas) took place in April 1983. In addi- Quiche, Tzotzil, and Chorti. The first three tion, several sessions organized by linguists literatures are exceptionally well documented at the annual meetings of the American An- for both the Classical and Modern variants of thropological Association in December 1982 their languages. The literatures of many lan- were concerned with the stylistic charac- guages, such as Tzotzil and Chorti, are oral, teristics of American Indian formal speech. not written, and in only a few cases do we There is, then, a growing consensus that Na- ix VICTORIA R. BRICKER tive American literatures have literary, as well as historical, cultural, and linguistic value. The five literatures represented here illustrate some of the dimensions of that concern. V.R.B. x

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