Maya Narrative Arts
Title | Maya Narrative Arts PDF eBook |
Author | Karen Bassie-Sweet |
Publisher | University Press of Colorado |
Total Pages | 322 |
Release | 2019-01-15 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1607327422 |
In Maya Narrative Arts, authors Karen Bassie-Sweet and Nicholas A. Hopkins present a comprehensive and innovative analysis of the principles of Classic Maya narrative arts and apply those principles to some of the major monuments of the site of Palenque. They demonstrate a recent methodological shift in the examination of art and inscriptions away from minute technical issues and toward the poetics and narratives of texts and the relationship between texts and images. Bassie-Sweet and Hopkins show that both visual and verbal media present carefully planned narratives, and that the two are intimately related in the composition of Classic Maya monuments. Text and image interaction is discussed through examples of stelae, wall panels, lintels, benches, and miscellaneous artifacts including ceramic vessels and codices. Bassie-Sweet and Hopkins consider the principles of contrast and complementarity that underlie narrative structures and place this study in the context of earlier work, proposing a new paradigm for Maya epigraphy. They also address the narrative organization of texts and images as manifested in selected hieroglyphic inscriptions and the accompanying illustrations, stressing the interplay between the two. Arguing for a more holistic approach to Classic Maya art and literature, Maya Narrative Arts reveals how close observation and reading can be equally if not more productive than theoretical discussions, which too often stray from the very data that they attempt to elucidate. The book will be significant for Mesoamerican art historians, epigraphers, linguists, and archaeologists.
A Maya Universe in Stone
Title | A Maya Universe in Stone PDF eBook |
Author | Stephen Houston |
Publisher | Getty Publications |
Total Pages | 194 |
Release | 2021-12-28 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 1606067451 |
The first study devoted to a single sculptor in ancient America, as understood through four unprovenanced masterworks traced to a small sector of Guatemala. In 1950, Dana Lamb, an explorer of some notoriety, stumbled on a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. Lamb failed to record the location of the site he called Laxtunich, turning his find into the mystery at the center of this book. The lintels he discovered there, long since looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. Using fieldwork, physical evidence, and Lamb’s expedition notes, the authors identify a small area with archaeological sites where the carvings were likely produced. Remarkably, the vividly colored lintels, replete with dynastic and cosmic information, can be assigned to a carver, Mayuy, who sculpted his name on two of them. To an extent nearly unique in ancient America, Mayuy can be studied over time as his style developed and his artistic ambition grew. An in-depth analysis of Laxtunich Lintel 1 examines how Mayuy grafted celestial, seasonal, and divine identities onto a local magnate and his overlord from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. This volume contextualizes the lintels and points the way to their reprovenancing and, as an ultimate aim, repatriation to Guatemala.
Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya
Title | Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya PDF eBook |
Author | Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Total Pages | 303 |
Release | 2017-04-25 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0300224672 |
This nuanced account explores Maya mythology through the lens of art, text, and culture. It offers an important reexamination of the mid-16th-century Popol Vuh, long considered an authoritative text, which is better understood as one among many crucial sources for the interpretation of ancient Maya art and myth. Using materials gathered across Mesoamerica, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos bridges the gap between written texts and artistic representations, identifying key mythical subjects and uncovering their variations in narratives and visual depictions. Central characters—including a secluded young goddess, a malevolent grandmother, a dead father, and the young gods who became the sun and the moon—are identified in pottery, sculpture, mural painting, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Highlighting such previously overlooked topics as sexuality and generational struggles, this beautifully illustrated book paves the way for a new understanding of Maya myths and their lavish expression in ancient art.
Art of the Maya Scribe
Title | Art of the Maya Scribe PDF eBook |
Author | Michael Coe |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 248 |
Release | 1998-02 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN |
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. This volume is the first to make full use of the latest research and the first to consider Maya writing both aesthetically and in terms of its meaning. Michael D. Coe begins by examining the origins and character of the script. He then explores the world of the scribes and "keepers of the holy books, " decoding their depiction in Maya art and describing the mediums in which they worked, their tools, and techniques.
Narrative in Classic Maya Art
Title | Narrative in Classic Maya Art PDF eBook |
Author | Dorie Reents-Budet |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 48 |
Release | 1986 |
Genre | Central America |
ISBN |
The Popol Vuh
Title | The Popol Vuh PDF eBook |
Author | Lewis Spence |
Publisher | New York : AMS Press |
Total Pages | 80 |
Release | 1908 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN |
Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives
Title | Place and Identity in Classic Maya Narratives PDF eBook |
Author | Alexandre Tokovinine |
Publisher | Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection |
Total Pages | 0 |
Release | 2013 |
Genre | Inscriptions, Mayan |
ISBN | 9780884023920 |
By examining the connections between place and identity in the Classic Maya culture that thrived in the Yucatan peninsula and parts of Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras from 350 to 900 CE, Alexandre Tokovinine addresses one of the crucial research questions in anthropology: How do human communities define themselves in relation to landscapes?