Aztecs: An InterpretationIn 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan, magnificent centre of the Aztec empire, fell to the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Inga Clendinnen's account of the Aztecs recreates the culture of that city in its last unthreatened years. It provides a vividly dramatic analysis of Aztec ceremony as performance art, binding the key experiences and concerns of social existence in the late imperial city to the mannered violence of their ritual killings. |
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Page 5
... imperial cult of the warriors , and those gentler agricultural rituals cherished by the common folk.5 Most reconstructions of Nahuatl thought rest on the semantic and etymological analysis of sixteenth - century texts in Latin and ...
... imperial cult of the warriors , and those gentler agricultural rituals cherished by the common folk.5 Most reconstructions of Nahuatl thought rest on the semantic and etymological analysis of sixteenth - century texts in Latin and ...
Page 7
... imperial people in tandem with their creation of their imperial city . A major tool in that double making was ritual , which for the Mexica was a highly elastic and dynamic expressive mode , more street theatre than museum piece . A ...
... imperial people in tandem with their creation of their imperial city . A major tool in that double making was ritual , which for the Mexica was a highly elastic and dynamic expressive mode , more street theatre than museum piece . A ...
Page 14
... imperial power of the region, Tollan. That identification required the construc- tion of a past commensurate with their present hopes and imagined future. It also required that their neighbours be brought, by persuasion or fear, into ...
... imperial power of the region, Tollan. That identification required the construc- tion of a past commensurate with their present hopes and imagined future. It also required that their neighbours be brought, by persuasion or fear, into ...
Page 15
... imperial city bowered in the wealth won by war , yet constantly invoking the magical fertility of Tollan , asserts with new and dis- tinctive intensity the connections between war and agri- culture . Therefore my concern is not with ...
... imperial city bowered in the wealth won by war , yet constantly invoking the magical fertility of Tollan , asserts with new and dis- tinctive intensity the connections between war and agri- culture . Therefore my concern is not with ...
Page 16
... imperial city to investigate notions of temporality and change; into the tight-knit world of warriors to explore the bitterness of isolation; into the relatively guarded place of women to detect the disruptions of the dangerous sacred ...
... imperial city to investigate notions of temporality and change; into the tight-knit world of warriors to explore the bitterness of isolation; into the relatively guarded place of women to detect the disruptions of the dangerous sacred ...
Contents
| 19 | |
Local Perspectives | 63 |
Victims | 121 |
Warriors Priests and Merchants | 156 |
The Masculine Self Discovered | 200 |
Wives | 216 |
Mothers | 246 |
The Female Being Revealed | 292 |
Aesthetics | 301 |
The World Transformed the World | 333 |
Defeat | 375 |
Select Bibliography | 511 |
Index | 545 |
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Common terms and phrases
action Aztec battle Bernardino de Sahagún blood body Borbonicus calpulli Cantares Mexicanos captives ceremonial chapter conquest Cortés cultural dance death deity Diego Durán display eagle earth edited empire feast feathers female festival fire flayed flesh Florentine Codex flowers formal girls goddess gods heart Historia honour household Huitzilopochtli human Ibid images imperial Indian ixiptlas jaguar Johanna Broda León-Portilla living López Austin lords maguey maize male merchants Mesoamerican metaphor Mexica Mexico City Miguel León-Portilla Moctezoma mother Nahua Nahuatl noble Nonetheless notion Nueva España Ochpaniztli offered one’s painted Panquetzaliztli performance perhaps Press priestly priests pulque pyramid quetzal Quetzalcoatl Quiñones Keber regalia representations rior ritual ruler sacred power Sahag´un’s sexual skin slaves social society song Spaniards Spanish Templo Mayor Tenochtitlan Texcoco Tezcatlipoca thou tion Tlaloc Tlatelolco tlatoani Toci Toltec translation tribute valley victims warrior house woman women Xipe Totec young