The Manuscript Hunter: Brasseur de Bourbourg's Travels Through Central America and Mexico, 1854-1859 Volume 84 - Paperback
The Manuscript Hunter: Brasseur de Bourbourg's Travels Through Central America and Mexico, 1854-1859 Volume 84 - Paperback
by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (Author), Katia Sainson (Editor), Katia Sainson (Translator)
In two decades of traveling throughout Mexico, Central America, and Europe, French priest Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (1814-1874) amassed hundreds of indigenous manuscripts and printed books, including grammars and vocabularies that brought to light languages and cultures little known at the time. Although his efforts yielded many of the foundational texts of Mesoamerican studies--the pre-Columbian Codex Troana, the only known copies of the Popol Vuh and the indigenous dance drama Rabinal-Achi, and Diego De Landa's Relación de la cosas de Yucatán--Brasseur earned disdain among scholars for his theories linking Maya writings to the mythical continent of Atlantis. In The Manuscript Hunter, translator Katia Sainson reasserts his standing as the founder of modern Maya studies, presenting three of his travel writings in English for the first time.