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 8
... (perhaps, although this must be demonstrated) shared. One task will be to identify those themes and emotions, to understand their orches- tration and to discover how, and how far, they caught up the themes and emotions of key experiences ...
... (perhaps, although this must be demonstrated) shared. One task will be to identify those themes and emotions, to understand their orches- tration and to discover how, and how far, they caught up the themes and emotions of key experiences ...
Page 12
... perhaps by 1568, with an abbre- viated Spanish translation or commentary added later. By 1569 a fair copy of all twelve books had been made in Nahuatl, and Sahag ́un's scribes had made their final corrections.19 The resulting manuscript ...
... perhaps by 1568, with an abbre- viated Spanish translation or commentary added later. By 1569 a fair copy of all twelve books had been made in Nahuatl, and Sahag ́un's scribes had made their final corrections.19 The resulting manuscript ...
Page 23
... perhaps five hundred metres square, dense with the immaculately worked masonry of more than eighty structures: the pools, pyramids, and houses of the gods and of the men and women who served them. The hallucinatory bulk of the Great ...
... perhaps five hundred metres square, dense with the immaculately worked masonry of more than eighty structures: the pools, pyramids, and houses of the gods and of the men and women who served them. The hallucinatory bulk of the Great ...
Page 24
... perhaps thirteen thousand per square kilometre. (Seville, the largest city in Spain, and the last European town most of the Spaniards had seen, numbered about sixty to seventy thousand people in 1500, and by 1588 only one hundred and ...
... perhaps thirteen thousand per square kilometre. (Seville, the largest city in Spain, and the last European town most of the Spaniards had seen, numbered about sixty to seventy thousand people in 1500, and by 1588 only one hundred and ...
Page 27
... perhaps fictive) kinship associations. By the sixteenth century shared land and the notion of a shared past had become more a matter of sentiment than a historically based actuality, but the sentiment remained potent. There were ...
... perhaps fictive) kinship associations. By the sixteenth century shared land and the notion of a shared past had become more a matter of sentiment than a historically based actuality, but the sentiment remained potent. There were ...
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