Diálogos en guaraní, un manuscrit inédit des réductions jésuites du Paraguay (XVIIIe siècle)

Abstract

Dialogos en guarani is the spanish title embossed on the spine label of a beautifully bound, gilt-edged monolingual guarani manuscript of 283 pages and 88 chapter headlines. This perfectly well kept manuscript has been identified by ANR LANGAS project team in a library of Luján (Argentina) in may 2013, and digitalized in November 2014. Without any mention of author nor date, written by different hands, its origin, objectives and uses arise several hypothesis. Its paper, ink, calligraphies and orthography drive us to date it at the beginning of XVIII century, a period of economical and cultural apogee within the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay (1609-1767). This article briefly draws up the trajectory of the manuscript, places it within the whole of the corpus known at this stage, and compares it with a partial copy of the same text, made in Germany in XIX century. Together with the translation of a few excerpts, we intend to present new research perspectives open by this document and that should be explored by LANGAS team in the coming years.

Keywords

• Jesuits
• Guarani
• Paraguay
• Missions
• linguistic anthropology