Nine Visits to the Mythworld

Nine Visits to the Mythworld PDF Author: Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1771623780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In the Fall of 1900, a young American anthropologist named John Swanton arrived in the Haida country, on the Northwest Coast of North America, intending to learn everything he could about Haida mythology. He spent the next ten months phonetically transcribing several thousand pages of myths, stories, histories and songs in the Haida language. Swanton met a number of fine mythtellers during his year in the Haida country. Each had his own style and his own repertoire. Two of them—a blind man in his fifties by the name of Ghandl, and a crippled septuagenarian named Skaay—were artists of extraordinary stature, revered in their own communities and admired ever since by the few specialists aware of their great legacy. Nine Visits to the Mythworld includes all the finest works of one of these master mythtellers. In November 1900, when Ghandl dictated these nine stories, the Haida world lay in ruins. Wave upon wave of smallpox and other diseases, rapacious commercial exploitation by fur traders, whalers and miners, and relentless missionization by the church had taken a huge toll on Haida culture. Yet in the blind poet’s mind, the great tradition lived, and in his voice it comes alive. Robert Bringhurst’s eloquent and vivid translations of these works are supplemented by explanatory notes that supply the needed background information.

Nine Visits to the Mythworld

Nine Visits to the Mythworld PDF Author: Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1771623780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In the Fall of 1900, a young American anthropologist named John Swanton arrived in the Haida country, on the Northwest Coast of North America, intending to learn everything he could about Haida mythology. He spent the next ten months phonetically transcribing several thousand pages of myths, stories, histories and songs in the Haida language. Swanton met a number of fine mythtellers during his year in the Haida country. Each had his own style and his own repertoire. Two of them—a blind man in his fifties by the name of Ghandl, and a crippled septuagenarian named Skaay—were artists of extraordinary stature, revered in their own communities and admired ever since by the few specialists aware of their great legacy. Nine Visits to the Mythworld includes all the finest works of one of these master mythtellers. In November 1900, when Ghandl dictated these nine stories, the Haida world lay in ruins. Wave upon wave of smallpox and other diseases, rapacious commercial exploitation by fur traders, whalers and miners, and relentless missionization by the church had taken a huge toll on Haida culture. Yet in the blind poet’s mind, the great tradition lived, and in his voice it comes alive. Robert Bringhurst’s eloquent and vivid translations of these works are supplemented by explanatory notes that supply the needed background information.

Nine Visits to the Mythworld

Nine Visits to the Mythworld PDF Author: Ghandl
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803213166
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
The nine stories contained in this volume are the finest offerings from one of the last of the traditional Haida storytellers, Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas. Ghandl was born in 1851 in a small Haida island community off the coast of British Columbia. His world was devastated by waves of European diseases, which wiped out over ninety percent of the Haidas and robbed him of his sight. He became a skilled listener, taking in the myths, legends, and everyday stories of his people. Creatively adapting them, the blind storyteller became a master of his craft. In 1900 John Swanton, with the help of a translator, transcribed a number of Ghandl's narrative poems. Nearly all of the poems in this volume are qqaygaang, narrative poems set in the Haida mythtime of long ago. One story, ?The Names of Their Gambling Sticks,? is a qqayaagaang, a story that juxtaposes mythtime and historical time and is the property of a Haida family. Each poem creatively enacts a myth in a way that illuminates and celebrates the traditional world of the Haidas and reveals Ghandl's own acute sense of the foibles and great potential of all human beings. Meticulously and sensitively translated and annotated by Robert Bringhurst, these stories have finally been given the attention they deserve.

Nine Visits to the Mythworld

Nine Visits to the Mythworld PDF Author: Ghandl of Ghandl
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 9781771623773
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the Fall of 1900, a young American anthropologist named John Swanton arrived in the Haida country, on the Northwest Coast of North America, intending to learn everything he could about Haida mythology. He spent the next ten months phonetically transcribing several thousand pages of myths, stories, histories and songs in the Haida language. Swanton met a number of fine mythtellers during his year in the Haida country. Each had his own style and his own repertoire. Two of them--a blind man in his fifties by the name of Ghandl, and a septuagenarian named Skaay--were artists of extraordinary stature, revered in their own communities and admired ever since by the few specialists aware of their great legacy. Nine Visits to the Mythworld includes all the finest works of one of these master mythtellers. In November 1900, when Ghandl dictated these nine stories, the Haida world lay in near ruins. Wave upon wave of smallpox and other diseases, rapacious commercial exploitation by fur traders, whalers and miners, and relentless missionization by the church had taken a huge toll on Haida culture. Yet in the blind poet's mind, the great tradition lived, and in his voice it comes alive. Robert Bringhurst's eloquent and vivid translations of these works are supplemented by explanatory notes that supply the needed background information.

Nine Visits to the Mythworld

Nine Visits to the Mythworld PDF Author: Robert Bringhurst
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781550548310
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Being in Being

Being in Being PDF Author: Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1771623764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Being in Being contains three masterpieces by legendary Haida mythteller Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay. The shortest recounts the high points of the legend of his family. The longest, Raven Travelling, is the most complex version of the story of the Raven ever recorded on the Northwest Coast. The third is The Qquuna Cycle, the largest and most complex literary work in any Native Canadian language. It is a poem of epic length and one of the true masterpieces of North American literature.

A Story as Sharp as a Knife

A Story as Sharp as a Knife PDF Author: Robert Bringhurst
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
ISBN: 1553658396
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
A seminal collection of Haida myths and legends; now in a gorgeous new package. The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians from the fall of 1900 through the summer of 1901. Together they created a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form. Having worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, linguist and poet Robert Bringhurst brings both rigorous scholarship and a literary voice to the English translation of John Swanton's careful work. He sets the stories in a rich context that reaches out to dozens of native oral literatures and to myth-telling traditions around the globe. Attractively redesigned, this collection of First Nations oral literature is an important cultural record for future generations of Haida, scholars and other interested readers. It won the Edward Sapir Prize, awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and it was chosen as the Literary Editor's Book of the Year by the Times of London. Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the world.

Norse America

Norse America PDF Author: Gordon Campbell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198861559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The story of the Vikings in North America as both fact and fiction, from the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries to the myths and fabrications about their presence there that have developed in recent centuries. Tracking the saga of the Norse across the North Atlantic to America, Norse America sets the record straight about the idea that the Vikings 'discovered' America. The journey described is a continuum, with evidence-based history and archaeology at one end, and fake history and outright fraud at the other. In between there lies a huge expanse of uncertainty: sagas that may contain shards of truth, characters that may be partly historical, real archaeology that may be interpreted through the fictions of saga, and fragmentary evidence open to responsible and irresponsible interpretation. Norse America is a book that tells two stories. The first is the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries, ending (but not culminating) in a fleeting and ill-documented presence on the shores of the North American mainland. The second is the appropriation and enhancement of the westward narrative by Canadians and Americans who want America to have had white North European origins, who therefore want the Vikings to have 'discovered' America, and who in the advancement of that thesis have been willing to twist and manufacture evidence in support of claims grounded in an ideology of racial superiority.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie PDF Author: Mohit Kumar Ray
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
ISBN: 9788126906314
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Salman Rushdie (1947 ) Has Emerged Over The Years As One Of The Most Controversial Figures Of Our Times Who Excites Contrary Feelings. But Whether Admired Or Criticized, The Fact Remains That Rushdie, With His Commitment To Struggle For Freedom Of Expression, For Speech To The Silenced, For Power To The Disempowered, Is A Writer Who Cannot Be Ignored.One Of The Major Preoccupations Of Rushdie S Art Is The Issue Of Migrant Identity. Many Of His Characters Are Migrants Drifting From Shore To Shore In Search Of Some Imaginary Homeland , And Obviously The Author Identifies Himself With His Migrant Personae. Search For Identity Is Perhaps The One Recurring Theme In Rushdie S Works, And The Themes Of Double Identity , Divided Selves And Shadow Figures Persist In His Writings As Correlative For The Schismatic/Dual Identity Of The Migrant, As Well As The Necessary Confusion And Ambiguity Of The Migrant Existence. Rushdie Describes The World From This Unique Point Of View Of The Migrant Narrator. He Is Also Conscious Of His Role In This Regard In Re-Describing The World, And Thus Creating A New Vision Of Art And Life.By Exercising What He Describes As The Migrant Writer S Privilege To Choose His Parents Rushdie Has Chosen His Inheritance From A Vast Repertoire Of Literary Parents, Including Cervantes, Kafka, Melville, Et Al.His Novels And Stories Derive Their Special Flavour From The Author S Superb Handling Of The Characteristic Postmodern Devices Like Magic Realism, Palimpsest, Ekphrasis, Etc. Rushdie Has Been Rightly Compared With Such Literary Innovators Stalwarts Of Our Times As Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Et Al. Readers Of The Present Volumes Will Be Taken Round The World Of Rushdie By Erudite Scholars Whose Well-Researched, Perceptive Articles Will Add Substantially To Their Enjoyment Of These Fantastic Imaginary Homelands .

Being in Being

Being in Being PDF Author: Skaay
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803213289
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay may have been one of the greatest Native storytellers of all time. Born in the Haida village of Qquuna about 1827 and crippled by an injury in middle age, he devoted himself to the art of telling stories. As the Haidas' older way of life changed dramatically under the onslaught of smallpox epidemics and contact with the outside world, Skaay became the undisputed master storyteller among them. When the young American linguist John Swanton arrived in the fall of 1900 to record Haida myths, poems, and oral histories, Skaay dictated to him some of his best stories. Included in this volume are three of Skaay's masterpieces, recorded originally by John Swanton and edited and translated by Robert Bringhurst: "The Qquuna Cycle" is the longest extant work of Haida poetry and one of the great monuments of Native American literature; "Raven Travelling" is the most complex trickster story ever recorded on the Northwest Coast; and "The Qquuna Qiighawaay" is the brief and poignant story of Skaay's maternal lineage.

Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English

Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English PDF Author: Eugene Benson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134468482
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1950

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Book Description
" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.