Rewriting of Aboriginal Myths in two Novels from the first half of the 20th Century: Hombres de maíz by M.A. Asturias, and Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade

Abstract

American culture, the paradigm of a hybrid culture, is an unstable point of confluence between traditions that existed before the conquest and those that came after. In Hombres de maíz(1949), Asturias uses the mythical corpus of the ancestors; theBooks of Chilam Balam; the Annals of the cakchiqueles; the Hymns of the Godscollected by Sahagún: and, most importantly, that great mythical narrative that is the Popol Vuh. These texts reveal an implication and reflection between the old structures of myth and the modern narrative techniques. Before these experiments, in the context of the esthetic primitivism, Mário de Andrade published his rhapsodic Macunaíma(1928), a parodic revision of myth.