Book of the Fourth World
Reading the Native Americas through their Literature

In order to explore the literature of this world, Brotherston uses primary sources that have traditionally been ignored because they have not conformed to Western definitions of oral and written literature.

Gordon Brotherston (Author)

9780521314930, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 November 1995

520 pages
23.5 x 15.4 x 2.5 cm, 0.758 kg

The Book of the Fourth World offers detailed analyses of texts that range far back into the centuries of civilised life from what is now Latin- and Anglo-America. At the time of its 'discovery', the American continent was identified as the Fourth World of our planet. In the course of just a few centuries its original inhabitants, though settled there for millennia and countable in many millions, have come to be perceived as a marginal if not entirely dispensable factor in the continent's destiny. Today the term has been taken up again by its native peoples, to describe their own world: both its threatened present condition, and its political history, which stretches back thousands of years before Columbus. In order to explore the literature of this world, Brotherston uses primary sources that have traditionally been ignored because they have not conformed to Western definitions of oral and written literature, such as the scrolls of the Algonkin, the knotted strings (Quipus) of the Inca, Navajo dry-paintings and the encyclopedic pages of Meso-America's screenfold books.

List of illustrations
Prefatory notes
Acknowledgements
Prologue: America as the fourth world
Part I. Text: 1. Provenance
2. Language and its instances
3. Configurations of space
4. Configurations of time
Part II. Political Memory: 5. Peten
6. Tollan
7. Turtle Island
8. Tahuantinsuyu
Part III. Genesis: 9. Popol Vuh
10. World ages and metamorphosis
11. The epic
12. American cosmos
Part IV. Into the language of America
13. The translation process
Epilogue
Abbreviations used in notes and bibliography
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Archaeology [HD], Literary studies: general [DSB]