Despite recent developments in epigraphy, ethnopoetics, and the literary investigation of colonial and modern materials, few studies have compared glyphic texts and historic Maya literatures. Parallel Worlds examines Maya writing and literary traditions from the Classic period until today, revealing remarkable continuities across time. In this volume, contributions from leading scholars in Maya literary studies examine Maya discourse from Classic period hieroglyphic inscriptions to contemporary spoken narratives, focusing on parallelism to unite the literature historically. Contributors take an ethnopoetic approach, examining literary and verbal arts from a historical perspective, acknowledging that poetic form is as important as narrative content in deciphering what these writings reveal about ancient and contemporary worldviews. Encompassing a variety of literary motifs, including humor, folklore, incantation, mythology, and more specific forms of parallelism such as couplets, chiasms, kennings, and hyperbatons, Parallel Worlds is a rich journey through Maya culture and pre-Columbian literature that will be of interest to students and scholars of anthropology, ethnography, Latin American history, epigraphy, comparative literature, language studies, indigenous studies, and mythology.

This second edition includes revised and updated versions of three earlier publications: Understanding Maya Inscriptions: A Hieroglyph Handbook; New and Recent Maya Hieroglyph Readings; and A Resource Bibliography for the Decipherment of Maya Hieroglyphs and New Maya Hieroglyph Readings. This volume is designed to function as a self-teaching tool to help the neophyte, and yet be of value to scholars. It introduces the latest methods of analysis, illustrates techniques for computing Maya calendrics, uses the currently accepted orthography, provides syllabary and syntax, suggests new glyph readings, and presents various interpretations.

“A prodigious work of unmatched interdisciplinary scholarship” on Maya astronomy and religion (Journal of Interdisciplinary History). Observations of the sun, moon, planets, and stars played a central role in ancient Maya lifeways, as they do today among contemporary Maya who maintain the traditional ways. This pathfinding book reconstructs ancient Maya astronomy and cosmology through the astronomical information encoded in Pre-Columbian Maya art and confirmed by the current practices of living Maya peoples. Susan Milbrath opens the book with a discussion of modern Maya beliefs about astronomy, along with essential information on naked-eye observation. She devotes subsequent chapters to Pre-Columbian astronomical imagery, which she traces back through time, starting from the Colonial and Postclassic eras. She delves into many aspects of the Maya astronomical images, including the major astronomical gods and their associated glyphs, astronomical almanacs in the Maya codices and changes in the imagery of the heavens over time. This investigation yields new data and a new synthesis of information about the specific astronomical events and cycles recorded in Maya art and architecture. Indeed, it constitutes the first major study of the relationship between art and astronomy in ancient Maya culture. “Milbrath has given us a comprehensive reference work that facilitates access to a very broad and varied body of literature spanning several disciplines.” ―Isis “Destined to become a standard reference work on Maya archeoastronomy . . . Utterly comprehensive.” —Andrea Stone, Professor of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee