Chamulas in the World of the Sun: Time and Space in a Maya Oral Tradition

The oral tradition of the Chamula people in southern Mexico is rich and varied in its humor, detail, style, imagery, and insight. Descendants of the Ancient Maya, the Chamulas use language in a way that expresses their special understanding of the social and cosmic order to which they belong. The Sun/Christ deity presides over this universe. In this innovative study in anthropology and folklore, Gary Gossen offers a brilliant analysis of the cosmology, symbolism, and verbal behavior of the Chamulas, based upon his systematic collections of their oral traditions within the framework of their own folk classification scheme of language. Not surprisingly, the underlying structure of Chamula categories of time and space also provides an important key to understanding the style, structure, and performance of their folklore. Cosmology is thus used in this book as a metalanguage for reporting and analyzing another language, the reservoir of symbols and information in Chamula oral tradition. Mr. Gossen's analysis runs the gamut from children's improvised games and songs through court language and oratory to the appropriate language for joking, gossip, sacred narrative, prayer and ritual formulas. In addition, his description and analysis are augmented by more than 180 abstracts of narrative texts and several original Chamula drawings. There is a good chance that this book may come to be regarded as a classic in the field of symbolic analysis of myth and oral tradition. There are few, if any, published studies dealing with such a superb collection of texts and supporting ethnographic materials. -- Gary H. Gossen teaches anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.