Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

John Lloyd StephensProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.5
Word count
697K words
Chapters
70

Tags

English Originals Historical GeographyTravel Human GeographyHistorical RuinsDiscoveryTravel LiteratureArchaeological DiscoveryAdventure JourneyDocumentary NarrativeMesoamericaExotic CultureCultural Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I. by John L. StephensAuthor: Stephens, John L., 1805-1852,Language: English, Class: F1201: North America local history: Mexico, Release Date: Jul 10, 2010

Editor's review

This is Volume I of John L. Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, a public-domain travel text from Project Gutenberg. Writing as a reporter who walked the ground himself, Stephens records his nineteenth-century travels through the Yucatan Peninsula, balancing route, local custom, and on-site observation of ancient ruins; the narrative has a strong sense of movement. Volume I generally lays out the itinerary and the first encounters with sites, and its density lies not in theoretical construction but in the eyewitness's spatial description and immediate judgments. For today's reader its value is twofold: as an early specimen of travel writing, showing how the author organizes foreign observations; and as an early external record of Maya sites, to be read with an eye to the gap between its period perspective and later archaeological research. It should not be taken as an archaeological authority but as an observational text within its historical context. Best read slowly by those interested in Central American travel history and early expedition writing, ideally with a map at hand to check place names.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Keep a map of the Yucatan Peninsula open while reading, marking routes and site locations by chapter to build a sense of space.
  2. Record the author's on-site descriptions separately from later archaeological knowledge to avoid confusing observation with conclusion.
  3. Read at a chapter-by-chapter pace and write a few lines of summary after every one or two chapters to keep travel details from blurring together.
  4. In the English original, skip unfamiliar place and plant names at first, follow the main route, and look up details later.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70

FAQ

Is this book the complete travel account of Yucatan? No. This is Volume I of Incidents of Travel in Yucatan and covers only the first part of the author's journey; the rest appears in later volumes. For the full journey you need to continue with the subsequent volumes. Volume I works as an introduction, but it should not be used to summarize the whole work.
Do the descriptions of Maya sites still have reference value today? Yes, as a historical document and a sample of early external observation; but judgments about site dating and building function have been updated by later archaeology. Separate what the author saw from what he inferred, and do not treat it directly as current archaeological conclusion.
Can I read it without any background in Central American history? Yes, but first get a basic geographical framework of the Yucatan Peninsula and Maya civilization, or the many place and site names will blur together. The book follows an itinerary and is not strongly narrative; readers used to linear travel accounts will find it fairly accessible.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

John Lloyd Stephens Author · American · 1805–1852

John Lloyd Stephens (1805–1852) was an American traveler, archaeologist, and writer. He made two expeditions to Central America with the artist Frederick Catherwood to study Maya ruins, and their jointly authored Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843) presented Maya sites through text and illustrations, awakening Western interest in Maya civilization. His travel writing also covered Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, with vivid prose that combines personal observation and scholarly value. Four of his works are held in the collection, including the two volumes of Incidents of Travel in Yucatan and the two volumes of Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland. Beyond these works and expeditions, public information on his life is limited.