Description
The contributors--who include art historians, anthropologists, and literary theorists--examine the ways in which ancient Mesoamerican and Andean peoples conveyed meaning through hieroglyphic, pictorial, and coded systems, systems inseparable from the ideologies they were developed to serve. We see, then, how these systems changed with the European invasion, and how uniquely colonial writing systems came to embody the post-conquest American ideologies. The authors also explore the role of these early systems in religious discourse and their relation to later colonial writing.
Bringing the insights from Mesoamerica and the Andes to bear on a fundamental exchange among art history, literary theory, semiotics, and anthropology, the volume reveals the power contained in the medium of writing.
Contributors. Elizabeth Hill Boone, Tom Cummins, Stephen Houston, Mark B. King, Dana Leibsohn, Walter D. Mignolo, John Monaghan, John M. D. Pohl, Joanne Rappaport, Peter van der Loo
About the Author
Elizabeth Hill Boone is Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks.
Walter D. Mignolo is Professor in the Department of Romance Studies and the Program in Literature at Duke University.
Reviews
"Here are writing systems that are visual to their very core, free from the march of linguistic sounds. In showing us how to read such writing, these authors lead us across the boundaries of archaeology, linguistics, ethnology, history, and art history, and treat us to novel experiments along the way. Anyone who enjoys challenges to ordinary modes of textual interpretation and ordinary ideas about the nature of writing itself is in for quite a treat."-Dennis Tedlock, State University of New York, Buffalo
"This is an exceptionally comprehensive and informative work on Pre-Columbian and early colonial recording systems in Mesoamerica and the Andes. The various contributions focus on a range of hieroglyphic, logographic, and mnemonic recording systems, and there are also excellent discussions of the effects of the introduction of European writing on native recording systems. The articles touching on this latter topic all make clear the complexity of links, and the subtle interplay of changes, between record-keeping and ideology. An important and challenging book."-Gary Urton, Colgate University
Book Information
ISBN 9780822313885
Author Elizabeth Hill Boone
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 485g