Náhuatl Stories PDF Download

Author: Pablo González Casanova
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780864738332
Category : Animals
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Náhuatl Stories is the first translation into English of one of the classics of Mexican literature. The universality of the pre-Hispanic indigenous people of central Mexico, the Nahuas, backbone of the Aztec empire, is present not only in their magnificent architecture and the vibrancy of their paintings. Náhuatl literature conveys the customs, traditions, rituals and beliefs of a culture with a very complex socio-political structure whose cosmology sees gods, human beings and nature coexist and interact on a daily basis. Today, more than 1.5 million people still speak Náhuatl, the second most widely spoken language in Mexico after Spanish. These fourteen stories, collected and translated into Spanish by Pablo González Casanova, were first published in 1946. This edition presents the English translations facing the original Náhuatl texts, and includes the author’s introduction and the introduction to the Fourth Edition of 2001 by Miguel León-Portilla."--

Author: Salvador Novo
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477306110
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In "The War of the Fatties," a campy, tongue-in-cheek retelling of an episode from the Mexican "Trojan War," naked fat women from Tlatelolco discombobulate Tenochtitlan’s invading army by squirting them with breast milk. Told with satiric allusions to the policies and tactics used by Mexico’s current ruling party, PRI, to consolidate its power, the play unfolds a history of vain rivalry and decadence, intricate political maneuvers, corruption, and unchecked ambition that determined the course of Mexican history for two centuries before the Spanish conquest. Novo’s other works in this collection—"A Few Aspects of Sex among the Nahuas," "Ahuítzotl and the Magic Water," "Cuauhtémoc: Play in One Act," "Cuauhtémoc and Eulalia: A Dialogue," "Malinche and Carlota: A Dialogue," and "In Ticitézcatl or The Enchanted Mirror: Opera in Two Acts"—represent nearly all of his Aztec-related writings. Taken together, they provide a delightful introduction to Novo’s later works and a light-hearted, historically accurate introduction to Aztec culture. The text is supplemented by a glossary of Nahuatl terms, notes on the historical characters, and an introduction that provides historical background and places Novo’s works within their cultural context.

Author: Yan Garcia
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Learn Nahuatl, the language used by the Mexica (Aztec) civilization and still preserved by over a million people in Mexico. This guide is not written for the expert linguist, but rather for the beginner. Included are hundreds of examples and dozens of practice sets. An emphasis is placed on the Huasteca variety of Chicontepec, Veracruz. This second edition presents with improved updates, more vocabulary sections, larger reference dictionary, and new included grammar sections.

Author: Camilla Townsend
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500779325
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The essential guide to the world of Aztec mythology, based on Nahuatl-language sources that challenge the colonial history passed down to us by the Spanish. From their remote origins as migrating tribes to their rise as builders of empire, the Aztecs were among the most dynamic and feared peoples of ancient Mexico, with a belief system that was one of the most complex and vital in the ancient world. Historian Camilla Townsend returns to the original tales, told at the fireside by generations of Indigenous Nahuatl speakers. Along the way, she deals with human sacrifice, the raising of great temples, and the troubling legacy of the Spanish conquest. Few cultures are generally understood to have been so controlled by their religion as the Aztecs, and few religions are envisioned as being as violent and celebratory of death as theirs. In this introduction to the Aztec myths, Townsend draws from sixteenth-century historical annals and songs written down by Nahuatl-speaking peoples, now known as the Aztecs, in their own language to counter this narrative, inherited from the conquering Spaniards. In doing so, she reveals a rich tapestry of mythic tradition that defies modern expectations. Townsend retells stories ranging from the creation of the world, revealing the Aztec cosmological vision of nature and the divine, to legends of the Aztecs’ own past that show how they understood the foundation of their state and the course of their wars. She considers the impact of colonial contact on the myths and demonstrates that Indigenous engagement with the new cultural customs introduced by the Europeans never entirely uprooted old ways of thinking.

Author: Miriam Melton-Villanueva
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816533539
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This ethnohistory uses colonial-era native-language texts written by Nahuas to construct history from the indigenous point of view. The book offers the first internal ethnographic view of central Mexican indigenous communities in the critical time of independence, when modern Mexican Spanish developed its unique character, founded on indigenous concepts of space, time, and grammar. The Aztecs at Independence opens a window into the cultural life of writers, leaders, and worshippers--Nahua women and men in the midst of creating a vibrant community.

Author: Gloria Amescua
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683357388
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Award-winning illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings to life debut author Gloria Amescua's lyrical biography of an indigenous Nahua woman from Mexico who taught and preserved her people's culture through modeling for famous artists She was Luz Jiménez, child of the flower-song people, the powerful Aztec, who called themselves Nahua— who lost their land but who did not disappear. As a young Nahua girl in Mexico during the early 1900s, Luz learned how to grind corn in a metate, to twist yarn with her toes, and to weave on a loom. By the fire at night, she listened to stories of her community’s joys, suffering, and survival, and wove them into her heart. But when the Mexican Revolution came to her village, Luz and her family were forced to flee and start a new life. In Mexico City, Luz became a model for painters, sculptors, and photographers such as Diego Rivera, Jean Charlot, and Tina Modotti. These artists were interested in showing the true face of Mexico and not a European version. Through her work, Luz found a way to preserve her people's culture by sharing her native language, stories, and traditions. Soon, scholars came to learn from her. This moving, beautifully illustrated biography tells the remarkable story of how model and teacher Luz Jiménez became “the soul of Mexico”—a living link between the indigenous Nahua and the rest of the world. Through her deep pride in her roots and her unshakeable spirit, the world came to recognize the beauty and strength of her people. The book includes an author’s note, timeline, glossary, and bibliography.

Author: Camilla Townsend
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190673060
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Fifth Sun offers a comprehensive history of the Aztecs, spanning the period before conquest to a century after the conquest, based on rarely-used Nahuatl-language sources written by the indigenous people.

Author: Elizabeth Hill Boone
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292783124
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
The Aztecs and Mixtecs of ancient Mexico recorded their histories pictorially in images painted on hide, paper, and cloth. The tradition of painting history continued even after the Spanish Conquest, as the Spaniards accepted the pictorial histories as valid records of the past. Five Pre-Columbian and some 150 early colonial painted histories survive today. This copiously illustrated book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the Mexican painted history as an intellectual, documentary, and pictorial genre. Elizabeth Hill Boone explores how the Mexican historians conceptualized and painted their past and introduces the major pictorial records: the Aztec annals and cartographic histories and the Mixtec screenfolds and lienzos. Boone focuses her analysis on the kinds of stories told in the histories and on how the manuscripts work pictorially to encode, organize, and preserve these narratives. This twofold investigation broadens our understanding of how preconquest Mexicans used pictographic history for political and social ends. It also demonstrates how graphic writing systems created a broadly understood visual "language" that communicated effectively across ethnic and linguistic boundaries.

Author: Mark Z. Christensen
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271065524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
Beginning in the sixteenth century, ecclesiastics and others created religious texts written in the native languages of the Nahua and Yucatec Maya. These texts played an important role in the evangelization of central Mexico and Yucatan. Translated Christianities is the first book to provide readers with English translations of a variety of Nahuatl and Maya religious texts. It pulls Nahuatl and Maya sermons, catechisms, and confessional manuals out of relative obscurity and presents them to the reader in a way that illustrates similarities, differences, and trends in religious text production throughout the colonial period. The texts included in this work are diverse. Their authors range from Spanish ecclesiastics to native assistants, from Catholics to Methodists, and from sixteenth-century Nahuas to nineteenth-century Maya. Although translated from its native language into English, each text illustrates the impact of European and native cultures on its content. Medieval tales popular in Europe are transformed to accommodate a New World native audience, biblical figures assume native identities, and texts admonishing Christian behavior are tailored to meet the demands of a colonial native population. Moreover, the book provides the first translation and analysis of a Methodist catechism written in Yucatec Maya to convert the Maya of Belize and Yucatan. Ultimately, readers are offered an uncommon opportunity to read for themselves the translated Christianities that Nahuatl and Maya texts contained.

Author:
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816518869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
One of the great documents of colonial Mexico, the Codex Chimalpopoca chronicles the rise of Aztec civilization and preserves the mythology on which it was based. Its two complementary texts, Annals of Cuauhtitlan and Legend of the Suns, record the pre-CortŽsian history of the Valley of Mexico together with firsthand versions of that region's myths. Of particular interest are the stories of the hero-god Quetzalcoatl, for which the Chimalpopoca is the premier source. John Bierhorst's work is the first major scholarship on the Codex Chimalpopoca in more than forty years. His is the first edition in English and the first in any language to include the complete text of the Legend of the Suns. The precise, readable translation not only contributes to the study of Aztec history and literature but also makes the codex an indispensable reference for Aztec cultural topics, including land tenure, statecraft, the role of women, the tribute system, warfare, and human sacrifice.