Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-fwgfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T07:25:51.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Language of the Canek Manuscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

William F. Hanks
William F. Hanks
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Canek manuscript is written in a distinctive linguistic style, probably a local variant of Spanish influenced by Yucatec Maya and archaic forms of Spanish. It also reflects a curiously ambivalent perspective on the Itza king Canek, at once aligning him with the pagan Indians and suggesting an affinity with Saint Francis. Like many other colonial texts, the four extant folia of this manuscript show a blending of verbal genres. This paper presents a discourse analysis of the manuscript, demonstrating that it is organized according to a systematic rhetorical structure based on syntactic foregrounding, poetic parallelism and thematic development. Placed in the context of other colonial documents, this one displays the cultural and linguistic ambivalence of its author.

Type
Special Section: The Canek Manuscript
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 1992 , pp. 269 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bricker, Victoria R. 1981 The Indian Christ, the Indian King, the Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bricker, Victoria R. 1986 A Grammar of Mayan Hieroglyphs. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 56. Tulane University, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Bricker, Victoria R. 1989 The Last Gasp of Maya Hieroglyphic Writing in the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Chan Kan. In Word and Image in Mayan Culture, Explorations in Language, History and Representation, edited by Hanks, William F. and Rice, Don S., pp. 39–50. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Burkhart, Louise M. 1989 The Slippery Earth, Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.Google Scholar
Carmack, Robert 1981 The Quiché Mayas of Utatlan. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.Google Scholar
Carmack, Robert M., and Mondloch, James L. 1989 El Título de Yax y Otros Documentos Quichés de Totonicapán, Guatemala. Edicion facsimilar, transcripción, traducción y notas Carmack, de Robert M., and Mondloch, James L.. Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Mexico.Google Scholar
Collins, Anne 1977 The Maestros Cantores in Yucatan. In Anthropology and History in Yacatan, edited by Jones, Grant D., pp. 237–247. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Dibble, C. 1974 The Nahuatlization of Christianity. In Sixteenth Century Mexico: The work of Sahagún, edited by Edmonson, M.. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Edmonson, Munro S., and Bricker, Victoria R. 1985 Yucatecan Mayan Literature. In: Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 3, edited by Edmonson, Munro S., pp. 44–63. University of Texas Press, Austin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farriss, Nancy 1978 Nucleation vs. Dispersal: the Dynamics of Population Movement in Colonial Yucatan. Hispanic American Historical Review 58:187–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farriss, Nancy 1984 Maya Society under Colonial Rule. Princeton University Press, Princeton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farriss, Nancy 1987 Remembering the Future, Anticipating the Past: History, Time and Cosmology among the Maya of Yucatan. Comparative Studies in Society and History 29:566–593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garvin, Paul, editor and translator 1964 A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving 1983. Footing. In Forms of Talk, pp. 124–159. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. (Originally published 1979)Google Scholar
Gosner, Kevin 1989a Caciques and Conversion: Juan Atonal and the Struggle for Legitimacy in Post-conquest Chiapas. Paper presented at the XV Congress of Latin American Studies Association, Miami.Google Scholar
Gosner, Kevin 1989b Conceptualizing Community and Hierarchy: Recent Views of Colonial Maya Political Organization in the Highlands. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Gossen, Gary H. 1974 Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Traditíon. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Gossen, Gary H. 1985 Tzotzil Literature. In Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 3, edited by Edmonson, Munro S., pp. 65–106. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1986 Authenticity and Ambivalence in the Text: A Colonial Maya Case. American Ethnologist 13:721–744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1987 Discourse Genres in a Theory of Practice. American Ethnologist 14:668–692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1988 Grammar Style and Meaning in a Maya Manuscript. International Journal of American Linguistics 54:331–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1989a Elements of Maya style. In Word and Image in Mayan Culture, Explorations in Language, History and Representation, edited by Hanks, William F. and Rice, Don S., pp. 92–111. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1989b Word and Image in a Semiotic Perspective. In Word and Image in Maya Culture, Explorations in Language, History and Representation, edited by Hanks, William F. and Rice, Don S., pp. 8–21. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1990 Referential Practice, Language and Lived Space among the Maya. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. 1992 Intertextualité de l'espace. L'HOMME 32:55–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Havránek, B. 1964 The Functional Differentiation of the Standard Language. In A Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style, edited and translated by Garvin, Paul, pp. 3–17. Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC. (Originally published 1932).Google Scholar
Hawkins, John 1984 Inverse Images: The Meaning of Culture, Ethnicity and Family in Postcolonial Guatemala. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Nicholas A. 1987 The Lexicon of Maya Hieroglyphic Texts. Oral presentation at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (session 3–023).Google Scholar
Jones, Grant D., editor 1977 Anthropology and History in Yucatan. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Jones, Grant D. 1989 Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule, Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Jones, Grant D. 1991 El Manuscrito Can Ek: descubrimiento de una visita secreta del siglo xvii a Tah Itzá (Tayazal), última capital de los maya Itzáes. Introduction by Stuart, George E.. Colección Divulgación. National Geographic Society and Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico.Google Scholar
Jones, Grant D. 1992 The Canek Manuscript in Ethnohistorical Perspective. Ancient Mesoamerica. 3:243–268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Grant D., Rice, Don, and Rice, Prudence 1981 The Location of Tayasal: A Reconsideration in Light of Peten Ethnohistory and Archeology. American Antiquity 46:530–547.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Josserand, Kathryn J. 1987 The Discourse Structure of Maya Hieroglyphic Texts. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Justeson, John S. 1989 The Representational Conventions of Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. In Word and Image in Mayan Culture, Explorations in Language, History and Representation, edited by Hanks, William F. and Rice, Don S., pp. 25–38. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Justeson, John S., and Campbell, Lyle, editors 1984 Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Publication 9. State University of New York at Albany.Google Scholar
Mathews, Peter 1984 Appendix A. A Maya Hieroglyphic Syllabary. In Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by Justeson, John S. and Cambell, Lyle, pp. 311–314. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, Publication 9. State University of New York at Albany.Google Scholar
Miller, Arthur G., and Farriss, Nancy M. 1979 Religious Syncretism in Colonial Yucatan: The Archeological and Ethnohistorical Evidence from Tancah, Quintana Roo. In Maya Archeology and Ethnohistory, edited by Hammond, Norman and Willey, Gordon, pp. 223–241. University of Texas Press, Austin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morson, Gary S. 1981 The Boundaries of Genre, Dostoevsky's Diary of a Writer and the Traditions of Literary Utopia. University of Texas Press, Austin.Google Scholar
Quezada, Sergio 1985 Encomienda, cabildo y gubernatura indígena en Yucatán, 1541–1583. Historia Mexicana 34:662–684.Google Scholar
Ricard, Robert 1947 La conquista Espiritual de México. Translated by Garibay, Angel. Editorial Jus, Mexico.Google Scholar
RoysRalph, L. Ralph, L. 1943 The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatan. Publication 548. The Carnegie Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
RoysRalph, L. Ralph, L. 1957 The Political Geography of the Yucatan Maya. Publication 613. The Carnegie Institution, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Paul 1989 Unfinished Conversations. Mayas and Foreigners between Two Wars. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.Google Scholar
Tedlock, Dennis 1983 The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar