| Jim C. Tatum: A Motif-Index of Luis Rosado Vega’s Mayan Legends. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia (Academia Scientiarum Fennica). 2000. xxxviii + 117 pp. ISBN 951-41-0842-6 (hardback) 12 euros (hardback) |
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| The Mayan culture, long recognized as among the most advanced indigenous groups of Latin America, possesses a rich heritage of mythology and traditions still very apparent in the Yucatan Peninsula at the closing of the twentieth century. Although Mayan legends have been studied and published as early as 1844, there exists no extensive motif-index dealing with the topic. This work attempts to help fill that need by indexing the works of Yucatecan writer Luis Rosado Vega (1876-1958) the folklorist who has studied most extensively the body of Mayan folk tales in El alma misteriosa del Mayab (1934) and Amerindmaya (1938).
JAMES C. TATUM (b. 1939, Litchfield, Nebraska) did his graduate work at Tulane, teaches at the University of South Florida, and has another work about Mexican history, Viaje de Perico Ligero al pais de los moros (1972). He has a life-long interest in archaeology and paleontology and is known as a skilled preparator. |
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