2000 Years of Mayan Literature [Paperback]

Mayan literature is among the oldest in the world, spanning an astonishing two millennia from deep pre-Columbian antiquity to the present day. Here, for the first time, is a fully illustrated survey, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the works of later writers using the Roman alphabet. Dennis Tedlockethnographer, linguist, poet, and award-winning authordraws on decades of living and working among the Maya to assemble this groundbreaking book, which is the first to treat ancient Mayan texts as literature. Tedlock considers the texts chronologically. He establishes that women were among the ancient writers and challenges the idea that Mayan rulers claimed the status of gods.2000 Years of Mayan Literatureexpands our understanding and appreciation not only of Mayan literature but of indigenous American literature in its entirety.

Dennis Tedlockis Distinguished Professor and Endowed McNulty Chair of English and Research Professor of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York. He won the PEN Translation Prize forPopol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings.For his other books he has received awards from the American Folklore Society, the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, the Society for Humanistic Anthropology, and the Association of American Publishers.

Acknowledgments
Note on the Pronunciation of Mayan Words
Introduction

PART ONE
1. Learning to Read
2. Early Mayan Writing
3. The Skilled Observer from Maxam
4. From the Time of Gods to the Time of Lords
5. Cormorant and Her Three Sons
6. Temple of the Sun- Eyed Shield
7. Temple of the Tree of Yellow Corn
8. Lady Shark Fin and the Eve ning Star
9. The Rattlesnakes of the City of Three Stones
10. Drawing and Designing with Words
11. Graffiti
12. The Question of the Beginning and End of Time
13. The Mouth of lÃY