A Critical Translation of Miguel Angel Asturias's Leyendas de Guatemala

FAIN: FT-57881-10

Richard Kelly Washbourne
Kent State University (Kent, OH 44242-0001)

My proposal is to produce a first translation of 1967 Nobel laureate Miguel Angel Asturias's Leyendas de Guatemala (1930) [Legends of Guatemala], including a critical apparatus: an introduction that investigates the role of language and contextualizes the Mayan intertexts and worldview that permeate the work; a translator's introduction that details the translator's role, challenges, and decision-making; and a glossary of allusions. This work aims to fill a gap in the understanding and appreciation of the anthropological in twentieth-century Latin American fiction, while joining the important body of aesthetic works from the region imbued with a postcolonial consciousness and engaged in the project of nation-formation.

Associated Products

Legends of Guatemala (Book)
Title: Legends of Guatemala
Author: Miguel Angel Asturias
Abstract: The first English-language translation of Guatemalan Nobel Laureate Migel Angel Asturias' first book of fiction. Leyendas de Guatemala (1930) was a groundbreaking achievement of "ethnographic surrealism", a liberating avant-grade recreation of popular tales and characters from the Guatemalan collective unconscious, including from the Mayan sacred text, the Popol Vuh. A riot of folklore,, colonial resistance, animistic nature, and the unfolding drama of hybrid ethnic identity-formation.
Year: 2011
Publisher: Latin American Literary Review Press
Type: Single author monograph
Type: Translation
ISBN: 9781891270536
Translator: Kelly Washbourne
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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