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John Cramer
Professor Robert Lunday
ENGL 2332—14735
18 October 2016
Popol Vuh: Prominent Critiques
In considering the critical response to the Popol Vuh, there are two major volumes from
which this paper will focus, both which have given forth the most comprehensive and valuable
criticism of this work of Guatemalan creation text. Dennis Tedlock’s translation and
commentary, originally pu`blished in 1985, gives us the most widely recognized account and
critique of the Mayan Quiche book. From this text, Tedlock explains that the “lords of Quiche
consulted their book as they sat in council”, and that “their name for it was Popol Vuh or
“Council Book”” (Tedlock 23). The second major volume on the Popol Vuh is Popol Vuh: The
Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya, which was translated from Spanish by Delia Goetz
and Sylvanus G. Morley, from the original Spanish translation of the Mayan by Adrián Recinos.
As explained in the forward to Goetz’s text, the Popol Vuh, lost in its original format, was copied
in the native Quiche language, and then was later translated and rewritten into Spanish by Father
Francisco Ximénez, a Catholic parish priest in Guatemala (Goetz, Morley, and Recinos, ix). The
majority of comprehensive criticism of the Popol Vuh is focused within these two volumes. This
paper will also examine numerous academic articles with the intent of summarizing the critical
response to this sacred text.
Dennis Tedlock’s widely-read translation and commentary on the Popol Vuh explains
that the Popol Vuh, regardless of being written “hieroglyphic or alphabetic”, “tells us something
about the conceptual place of books in the Pre-Columbian world” (31). Tedlock explains that
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were the original hieroglyphic text of the “ancient word” to be literally translated, it might well
be very difficult to understand in contemporary terms (32). This helps to understand the
importance of the Latin-based version which exists as the basis for the modern translation and
interpretation of the original story. Transcribed into Latin from the lost original text, the writers
introduce a sort of operating framework, namely that it is written “amid the teaching of God, in
Christendom now,” which had to pose certain difficulties in appeasing an unwanted Spanish
audience (Tedlock 33). Tedlock continues to explain that while it might appear from the text that
the authors are claiming their written version of the Popol Vuh may well be the “only” version of
the story left, they may also be covering for themselves in order to protect themselves from any
retributive Spanish action (33).
Tedlock addresses the Quiche Mayan version of creation by a joining of the gods of the
