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Rabinal achi : a fifteenth-century Maya dynastic drama / edited by Alain Breton ; translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan and Robert Schneider ; foreword by Robert M. Carmack.
Penn Museum Library PM4231.Z77 .R3313 2007
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Series:
- Mesoamerican worlds
- Standardized Title:
- Rabinal-Achí. English
- Language:
- English
- French
- Subjects (All):
- Rabinal-Achí.
- Quiché drama.
- Physical Description:
- xviii, 396 pages : maps, facsimiles ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Boulder : University Press of Colorado, [2007]
- Summary:
- The Rabinal Achi, one of the most remarkable works of Mayan literature, dates back to the 1400s. In 2005, UNESCO declared Rabinal Achi to be a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. This drama is still performed with a ritual dance in the village of Rabinal (Baja Verapaz).
- The drama is set in the Guatemalan highlands in the second half of the fifteenth century. In an exemplary trial that takes place in Kajyub, the capital of the Rabinaleb at that time, a captured enemy warrior (K'iche Achi) appears before the royal court. A series of combative dialogues pits the offending warrior against the local warrior (Rabinal Achi) and the king (Job Toj), reconstructing the deeds of those involved and retracing the antagonistic history of these two Mayan groups, the Quiche and the Rabinaleb. Alain Breton approaches the text from an anthropological and ethnographical perspective, demonstrating that this indigenous text reenacts pre-Columbian historic paradigms. Breton's work is based on the Perez Manuscript (1913), a facsimile of which is included in its entirety. Breton translated into French an entirely new transcription of the original text, and Teresa Lavender Fagan and Robert Schneider translated the text into English. Both the transcription and the translation are accompanied by detailed commentary and a glossary.
- Contents:
- A Unique Text 2
- An Exceptional Destiny 7
- History of a Discovery 7
- Earlier Editions and Publications 11
- The Perez Manuscript 13
- Conflicts between the Rabinaleb and the Quiche 19
- The Historical Context 19
- The Trial 26
- The Protagonists 27
- An Agonistic Joust 42
- The Current State of the Text 47
- The Present Edition 48
- Regarding the Transcription 51
- Regarding the Translation 53
- Regarding the Presentation 53
- Part I The Perez Manuscript 55
- Part II The Text: Transcription and Translation 123
- Part III Analysis: An Exemplary History 279
- Return to the Places: Spaces and Journeys 280
- Spatial Perspective 281
- Temporal Perspective 286
- Historical Perspective 290
- Return to the Actors: Figures of the Warrior and the King 292
- The Figure of the Warrior 293
- The Figure of the King 297
- Supremacy of One Figure over the Other 300
- Return to Events 302
- A Disputed Territory 302
- An Impossible Alliance 306
- The War: A Metaphor for the Hunt 308
- Return to the Text: Epilogue 314.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 373-386) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780870818738
- 0870818732
- 9780870818752
- 0870818759
- OCLC:
- 144219589
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