Fiction Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
Story as Sharp as a Knife, A
The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World
- Publisher
- Douglas & McIntyre
- Initial publish date
- Jul 2012
- Category
- Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology, Native American, Folklore & Mythology
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781553658900
- Publish Date
- Jul 2012
- List Price
- $24.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
A seminal collection of Haida myths and legends; now in a gorgeous new package.
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. Together they created a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form.
Having worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, linguist and poet Robert Bringhurst brings both rigorous scholarship and a literary voice to the English translation of John Swanton's careful work. He sets the stories in a rich context that reaches out to dozens of native oral literatures and to myth-telling traditions around the globe.
Attractively redesigned, this collection of First Nations oral literature is an important cultural record for future generations of Haida, scholars and other interested readers. It won the Edward Sapir Prize, awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and it was chosen as the Literary Editor's Book of the Year by the Times of London.
Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the world.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is donated to the Council of the Haida Nation in support of their effort to resolve outstanding questions of aboriginal title to land and resources.
About the author
Robert Bringhurst is a poet, typographer and linguist, well known for his award-winning translations of the Haida storytellers Skaay and Ghandl, and for his translations of the early Greek philosopher-poet Parmenides. His manual The Elements of Typographic Style has itself been translated into ten languages and is now one of the world’s most influential texts on typographic design. Among his most recent publications is a pair of essay collections, The Tree of Meaning (GP, 2006) and Everywhere Being is Dancing (GP, 2007). Bringhurst lives on Quadra Island, off the British Columbia coast.
