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Robert Bringhurst
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A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers, 1) Paperback – April 1, 2011

by Robert Bringhurst (Author)

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The Haida world is a misty archipelago a hundred stormy miles off the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska. For a thousand years and more before the Europeans came, a great culture flourished in these islands. The masterworks of classical Haida sculpture, now enshrined in many of the world's great museums, range from exquisite tiny amulets to magnificent huge housepoles. Classical Haida literature is every bit as various and fine. It extends from tiny jewels crafted by master songmakers to elaborate mythic cycles lasting many hours.

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. His Haida hosts and colleagues had been raised in a wholly oral world where the mythic and the personal interpenetrate completely. They joined forces with their visitor, consciously creating a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form. Poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst has worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, which have waited until now for the broad recognition they deserve.

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 globe.

The world of classical Haida literature is a world as deep as the ocean, as close as the heart and as elusive as the Raven, whose unrepentant laugh persists within it all. This is a tradition brimming with profundity, hilariy and love. It belongs where Bringhurst sees it: among the great traditions of the world.

Bringhurst, an acclaimed typographer and book designer, will be redesigning this edition in a beautiful new package.
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  1. Print length
    544 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Douglas & McIntyre
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.5 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1553658396
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1553658399
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bringhurst's achievement is gigantic, as well as heroic. It's one of those works that rearranges the inside of your head -- a profound meditation on the nature of oral poetry and myth, and on the habits of thought and feeling that inform them." -- Margaret Atwood

"The brilliant analysis of myth and culture will find its place alongside such popular investigations as Radin's The Trickster... A Story as Sharp as a Knife will make academics tremble with jealousy and students of myth-telling shiver with excitement." ― Books in Canada

"Bringhurst's accomplishment is beyond praise... A Story as Sharp as a Knife merits a wide readership and a passionate response. It also deserves to win every literary award in sight." ― Montreal Gazette

"One of the most important books to grace Canadian literature in many years." ― Maclean's

"Once in a while a book appears that changes the way we see things. This is such a book. Bringhurst reclaims an extraordinary body of literature and teaches us to hear its sinewy, haunting music. In the process, he rewrites North American literary history and lays a depth charge in the assumptions of cultural anthropology. Rigorous and enchanting, a Story as Sharp as a Knife is a superb adventure of the mind and imagination. I couldn't put it down." -- Dennis Lee ― Dennis Lee

About the Author

Robert Bringhurst is one of Canada's most respected poets, designers and most probing cultural historians. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, lectured on Native American art and oral literature at universities around the world, studies linguistics at MIT under Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, and worked as a professional translator from Arabic and Greek.He is the author of the bestselling treatise on typography Elements of Typographic Style.

Bringhurst began to study the Haida language in 1982. His translations of Haida oral poetry have since appeared in major scholarly journals and in Brian Swann's groundbreaking anthology Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America.

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Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst

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