Title:
A story as sharp as a knife : the classical Haida mythtellers and their world
JLCTITLE245:
Robert Bringhurst.
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Vancouver : Douglas & McIntyre ; Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©1999.
Physical Description:
527 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
ISBN:
9781550546965
9781550547955
9780803213142
9780803261792
General Note:
Includes translations of poems.
Abstract:
"The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians from the fall of 1900 through the summer of 1901. His Haida hosts and colleagues had been raised in a wholly oral world where the mythic and the personal interpenetrate completely. They joined forces with their visitor, consciously creating a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form.
Poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst has worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, which have waited until now for the broad recognition they deserve."--Jacket.
Bibliography Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 493-516) and index.
Subject Term:
Geographic Term:
Variant Title:
Portion of title: As sharp as a knife
Contents:
Prologue: Reading What Cannot Be Written -- 1. Goose Food -- 2. Spoken Music -- 3. The One They Hand Along -- 4. Wealth Has Big Eyes -- 5. Oral Tradition and the Individual Talent -- 6. The Anthropologist and the Dogfish -- 7. Who's Related to Whom? -- 8. The Epic Dream -- 9. The Shaping of the Canon -- 10. The Flyting of Skaay and Xhyuu -- 11. You Are That Too -- 12. Sleek Blue Beings -- 13. The Iridescent Silence of the Trickster -- 14. The Last People in the World -- 15. A Knife That Could Open Its Mouth -- 16. The Historian of Ttanuu -- 17. Chase What's Gone -- 18. A Blue Hole in the Heart -- 19. The Prosody of Meaning -- 20. Shellheap of the Gods -- 21. 1 November 1908 -- 22. How the Town Mother's Wife Became the Widow of Her Husband's Sister's Sons -- App. 1. Haida Spelling and Pronunciation -- App. 2. Haida as a Written Language -- App. 3. Spelling of Other Native American Languages -- App. 4. The Structure of Skaay's Raven Travelling.
Language:
English and Haida.