The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village?s Way with Writing

Frank L. Salomon

ISBN 10: 0822350440 / ISBN 13: 9780822350446

Published by Duke University Press, 2011

About this Item

Based on the analysis of community records in a Peruvian village, The Lettered Mountain tells how Andean peasants thought to be illiterate appropriated the Roman alphabet long ago. Num Pages: 392 pages, 72 illustrations, 7 tables, 1 map. BIC Classification: 1KLSR; CFC; HBTB; JHMC. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 235 x 162 x 25. Weight in Grams: 568. . 2011. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780822350446

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village?s Way with Writing
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822350440
• ISBN 13: 9780822350446
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Andean peoples joined the world of alphabetic literacy nearly 500 years ago, yet the history of their literacy has remained hidden until now. In The Lettered Mountain, Frank Salomon and Mercedes Niño-Murcia expand notions of literacy and challenge stereotypes of Andean “orality” by analyzing the writings of mountain villagers from Inka times to the Internet era. Their historical ethnography is based on extensive research in the village of Tupicocha, in the central Peruvian province of Huarochirí. The region has a special place in the history of Latin American letters as the home of the unique early-seventeenth-century Quechua-language book explaining Peru’s ancient gods and priesthoods. Granted access to Tupicocha’s surprisingly rich internal archives, Salomon and Niño-Murcia found that legacy reflected in a distinctive version of lettered life developed prior to the arrival of state schools. In their detailed ethnography, writing emerges as a vital practice underlying specifically Andean sacred culture and self-governance. At the same time, the authors find that Andean relations with the nation-state have been disadvantaged by state writing standards developed in dialogue with European academies but not with the rural literate tradition.

About the Author

Frank Salomon is the John V. Murra Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village, also published by Duke University Press.

Mercedes Niño-Murcia is Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Associate Director of the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Iowa. She is a co-editor of Bilingualism and Identity: Spanish at the Crossroads with Other Languages.