Hand Spinning and Cotton in the Aztec Empire,as Revealed by the Codex Mendoza (original) (raw)
Related papers
“History in Pictures: Translating the Codex Mendoza,” Art History, 38.4 (Fall 2015): 682–701
This essay examines the Codex Mendoza, a pictorial manuscript created in Mexico City c. 1542, through a focus on acts and moments of translation. Making the codex involved linguistic and cultural translations, transforming images into words, oral narrative into written text, Nahuatl into Spanish, and Amerindian history and customs into viceregal and European versions. The codex was then physically translated or transported from Mexico to Paris, London, and Oxford. It later moved across media, from manuscript to print, and also interpretively, as publications provided different readings. The essay argues that mobility was not a physical accident that happened to a stable and immutable object, but rather a series of constitutive acts of translation, selection, and interpretation that produced multiple versions of the object itself.
Renaissance Quarterly, 2019
The "Codex Mendoza" is one of the earliest, most detailed, and most important postconquest accounts of pre-Hispanic Aztec life. Nahuas and Spaniards manufactured the codex through a complex process that involved translations across media, languages, and cultural framings. Translations made Aztec culture legible and acceptable to nonnative viewers and readers by recasting indigenous practices, knowledge, ontology, and epistemology. Following a stratigraphic approach that examines the process through which natives and Spaniards created a transcultural manuscript, the article examines the multiple interpretations and negotiations involved in producing images, books, and information about the indigenous world in early colonial Mexico.
Although the history of philology is merely an addition to the rediscovery of textual traditions which have been neglected for too long by academic philology, it is nonetheless an important one for its ability alone to provide an explanation of the existing asymmetric situation. When the world opened up after the 16th century following transoceanic navigations, European encounters with written traditions in America, Africa and Asia led to a variety of attitudes—from denial to fascination, from destruction to collection. These " philological encounters " , both material and conceptual, largely contributed to shape the views of the European Renaissance and the Enlightenment regarding language and writing. To understand the semiological and epistemological consequences of these views, this paper focuses on a single text produced at the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Codex Mendoza, and on the different interpretations to which the latter was subjected in Europe after crossing the Atlantic. The history of the Codex Mendoza would have us believe that it was during the 18th century, and not before, that writing became exclusively synonymous with alphabet, resulting in the marginalisation of non-alphabetic written systems—and this mainly for historiographical reasons.
2019
After the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Mexica elites had to rethink their political role in the new society, which included rewriting their histories. One of the first colonial manuscripts containing Mexica histories was the Codex Mendoza , a document produced in 1541 by Mexica upon a request of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. The purpose of this article is to analyze the Codex Mendoza ’s first section and highlight how the genre of European chronicles was used to structure the alphabetic texts, which are interspersed with the pictorial texts of native origin. It is argued here that the pictorial texts were reduced to illustrations for the Castilian alphabetic texts which, in turn, describe a set of information very similar to what is found in Castilian chronicles. The arrangement of the Codex Mendoza ’s history and its Castilian texts demonstrate that native peoples’ pre-Hispanic submission to the Mexica have been projected forward in time, aiming at forming part of the Castil...
Revista Eletrônica da ANPHLAC, 2019
After the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the Mexica elites had to rethink their political role in the new society, which included rewriting their histories. One of the first colonial manuscripts containing Mexica histories was the Codex Mendoza, a document produced in 1541 by Mexica upon a request of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. The purpose of this article is to analyze the Codex Mendoza’s first section and highlight how the genre of European chronicles was used to structure the alphabetic texts, which are interspersed with the pictorial texts of native origin. It is argued here that the pictorial texts were reduced to illustrations for the Castilian alphabetic texts which, in turn, describe a set of information very similar to what is found in Castilian chronicles. The arrangement of the Codex Mendoza’s history and its Castilian texts demonstrate that native peoples’ pre-Hispanic submission to the Mexica have been projected forward in time, aiming at forming part of the Castilian domains appropriated after the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and the creation of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Fuentes MesoAmericanas, Vol. 7, Verlag Anton Saurwein, 2020
Order at: https://mexicon.de/product/fuentes-mesoamericanas-7-2020/ The Codex Telleriano-Remensis is one of the most beautiful Aztec manuscripts from the early colonial period of Mexico. The first half of this codex relates to the Aztecan calendar system, whereas the second one is a detailed account of Aztec history, spanning a time from the beginning of the mythical migration of the Mexica in the eleventh century to the early colonial period in the mid-sixteenth century, including such far-reaching events as the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the war against Tlatelolco, and the conquest of Tenochtitlan led by Hernán Cortés in the years 1519–1521. This eventful history was recorded in a native writing system that can be described as a sophisticated composition of iconography, calendar notation, and such signs that are linked to the language of the Aztecs: Nahuatl. Even though the original Nahuatl text is accompanied by Spanish annotations written in Latin letters, many of the Nahuatl writing signs hitherto remained undeciphered. The first part of the present volume addresses the principles of this exceptional writing system. The second part is a meticulous study of the historical section, presenting numerous new decipherment proposals for yet uninterpreted or misinterpreted signs. The study is topped off with three catalogs, each printed in color: a catalog of the Nahuatl writing signs appearing in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis including their proposed reading, and two catalogs of the deciphered place signsa and the name signs of the depicted historical figures, respectively.
A catalogue of pre-1840 Nahuatl works held by the Lilly Library
1973
T H E EARLIEST BOOK known to have been printed in the New World was in Nahuatl. Nahuatl is the name of the Aztec language, spoken throughout central Mexico before the Spanish conquest; and this first book known to have been printed was the Breve y mas compendiosa doctrina cristiana en lengua m exicana y castellana published in 1539. 1 There are other books which have a claim to having been the first book printed in the Americas, since much of the history of early printing in Mexico remains unclear. Nevertheless, the amount of evidence in favor of the Doctrina cristiana makes its publication, if not its primacy, a certainty, although no copies exist today. One of the main reasons for the establishment of a printing press in Mexico centered around the need for materials to aid in the "spiritual conquest" of the area, the conversion of the conquered Aztec empire to Christianity. Thus it should come as no surprise that one of the first , if not the first, book printed in Mexico would be in Nahuatl. Throughout the next three centuries, the Nahuatl language continued to occupy a position of importance in the output of Mexican presses. Yet even through three centuries publications in Nahuatl did not lose their didactic nature, serving in the Christian education of the Indians. The Mendel Collection of the Lilly Library at Indiana University reflects the significance of Nahuatl in the history of Mexican printing. While the collection does not contain [ 69 J