Research Catalog
Romancing the Maya : Mexican antiquity in the American imagination, 1820-1915
- Title
- Romancing the Maya : Mexican antiquity in the American imagination, 1820-1915 / R. Tripp Evans.
- Author
- Evans, R. Tripp, 1968-
- Publication
- Austin : University of Texas Press, 2004.
- Supplementary Content
- Publisher description
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
2 Items
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Use in library | N6504 M4 Ev16 | Off-site | |
Not available - Please for assistance. | Text | Use in library | Off-site |
Holdings
Details
- Description
- xii, 202 pages : illustrations; 24 cm
- Summary
- "In this work, Tripp Evans explores why nineteenth-century Americans felt entitled to appropriate Mexico's cultural heritage as the United States' own. He focuses in particular on five well-known figures - American writer and amateur archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens, British architect Frederick Catherwood, Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the French emigre photographers Desire Charnay and Augustus Le Plongeon. Setting these figures in historical and cultural context, Evans uncovers their varying motives, including the Manifest Destiny-inspired desire to create a national museum of American antiquities in New York City, the attempt to identify the ancient Maya as part of the Lost Tribes of Israel (and so substantiate the Book of Mormon), and the hope of proving that ancient Mesoamerica was the cradle of North American and even Northern European civilization. Fascinating stories in themselves, these accounts of the first explorers also add an important new chapter to the early history of Mesoamerican archaeology."--BOOK JACKET.
- Subject
- Stephens, John L., 1805-1852
- Catherwood, Frederick
- Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
- Charnay, Désiré, 1828-1915
- Le Plongeon, Augustus, 1826-1908
- Le Plongeon, Alice D. 1851-1910
- Mayas > Antiquities
- Mayas > Transatlantic influences
- Mayas > Middle Eastern influences
- Mayas in popular culture
- Archaeological expeditions > Mexico > History
- Maya architecture > Mexico
- Architecture > Mexico > Attribution
- Cultural property > Mexico
- Mexico > Antiquities
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-189) and index.
- Contents
- 1. The second discovery of America -- 2. Incidents of transcription : 'American' antiquity in the work of Stephens and Catherwood -- 3. Joseph Smith and the archaeology of revelation -- 4. The Toltec Lens of Desire Charnay -- 5. Bordering on the magnificent : Augustus and Alice le Plongeon in the kingdom of Moo.
- ISBN
- 0292702477 (cl. : alk. paper)
- LCCN
- 2003025085
- OCLC
- ocm53901395
- SCSB-14549037
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries