Folk Literature of South American Indians: A Multivolume Series of Verbal Art

Abstract

In the 1960s, South Americanists became increasingly concerned about the alarming rate at which aboriginal societies on the subcontinent were being destroyed and their traditions relegated to oblivion before they could have been recorded. Even the existing body of oral literature — collected by travelers, missionaries, soldiers, naturalists, and ethnographers over nearly five hundred years — remained largely unavailable, for a variety of reasons. And the disappearance of autochthonous groups and the inaccessibility of existing source materials augured poorly for the future of South American mythography.