Literature
Incontestably the most significant surviving Native American literary text, the Popol Vuh is available online and as a printed book from Gitenstein Library here and here. The combined work consists of a series of related texts that provide a window into the autochthonous literary traditions of ancient Mesoamerica. Art historians have plumbed the text to make iconographic identifications of figures depicted on Classic Maya vases and other artworks. See, for example, this 3-minute video produced by staff at the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian. The video outlines the essential creation myth of the Popol Vuh. Bringing the story to life are the accompanying illustrations by ancient Maya artists and scribes.
Read about this masterpiece of world literature in The Popol Wuj: The Repositioning and Survival of Maya Culture by Carlos M. Lopéz, A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture (c2022). According to Lopéz, we must read the Popol Wuj for two important reasons. "First, because it is the most complete and intelligible surviving cultural record of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies. Secondly, because part of the epistemologies, cosmogonies, philosophical trends, and values contained in some of its tzijs could become the seeds of new thought if they enter in contact with our contemporary worldviews. A great deal of the contents of the Popol Wuj could offer alternative points of view for revisiting most of the ominous challenges arising from the current relationship between humans and nature" (56).
Image Credit: Portrait of a Maya Nobleman, Middle Classic Period (circa 500 CE), San Antonio Museum of Art
Writing
The written history of what is now Latin America did not begin with Columbus's 1492 voyage. The Maya invented a phonetic writing system by 200 CE and quite likely hundreds of year earlier. Several distinct writing systems developed in other parts of Mesoamerica including in what today are the Mexican states of Oaxaca and Veracruz, as well as in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec by about 400 BCE. The relationships of these first millennium BCE scripts to one another is not well understood. Fairly clear, however, is that even in the case of the phonetic Maya script, text and image are inextricably bound (or reinforcing). Images in Mesoamerican systems of visual signification including that of the Maya generally carry the narrative (iconographic) burden. Or as George Kubler might have put it, glyphs (writing) supplement or clarify the all-important image. We will explore the basic principles of the Classic Maya writing system in class. And we will see a few spectacular surviving examples of Maya writing that lean almost exclusively on the hieroglyphic syllabary (e.g., The Calakmul "Dynasty Vase").
Art of the Maya Scribe by Call Number: F1435.3.W75 C62 1998ISBN: 0810919885Publication Date: 1998-02-01Explore the aesthetics of Maya writing rather than its decipherment. "To the four great calligraphic traditions — ancient Egyptian, East Asian, Islamic, and western European — is now added a fifth: that of the ancient Maya. Long known but little understood, Maya writing has now largely been deciphered, leading to a new understanding of the Maya scribes and the society in which they lived" (dust jacket).
Breaking the Maya Code by Call Number: Internet Archive E-BOOKISBN: 0500277214Publication Date: 1993-09-01Dramatically written account of the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing by a scholar who witnessed many of those events. Still one of the most accessible and engaging sources on the topic. Also available in print, General Collection, call # F1435.3.W75C63x 1992.
