Scholars have long viewed histories of the Aztecs either as flawed chronologies plagued by internal inconsistencies and intersource discrepancies or as legends that indiscriminately mingle reality with the supernatural. But this new work draws fresh conclusions from these documents, proposing that Aztec dynastic history was recast by its sixteenth-century recorders not merely to glorify ancestors but to make sense out of the trauma of conquest and colonialism. The Aztec Kings is the first major study to take into ...
Read More
Scholars have long viewed histories of the Aztecs either as flawed chronologies plagued by internal inconsistencies and intersource discrepancies or as legends that indiscriminately mingle reality with the supernatural. But this new work draws fresh conclusions from these documents, proposing that Aztec dynastic history was recast by its sixteenth-century recorders not merely to glorify ancestors but to make sense out of the trauma of conquest and colonialism. The Aztec Kings is the first major study to take into account the Aztec cyclical conception of time--which required that history constantly be reinterpreted to achieve continuity between past and present--and to treat indigenous historical traditions as symbolic statements in narrative form. Susan Gillespie focuses on the dynastic history of the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, whose stories reveal how the Aztecs used "history" to construct, elaborate, and reify ideas about the nature of rulership and the cyclical nature of the cosmos, and how they projected the Spanish conquest deep into the Aztec past in order to make history accommodate that event. By demonstrating that most of Aztec history is nonliteral, she sheds new light on Aztec culture and on the function of history in society. By relating the cyclical structure of Aztec dynastic history to similar traditions of African and Polynesian peoples, she introduces a broader perspective on the function of history in society and on how and why history must change.
Read Less
Add this copy of The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in to cart. $37.00, good condition, Sold by Ubald Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Athens, GA, UNITED STATES, published 1989 by University of Arizona Press.
Add this copy of The Aztec Kings: the Construction of Rulership in to cart. $65.00, very good condition, Sold by Turn-The-Page Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Skyway, WA, UNITED STATES, published 1989 by University of Arizona Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Near Fine in Near Fine jacket. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1989. Prior owner's blimdstamp on half title page, otherwise a fine, clean, crisp copy. 1st printing. Full cloth binding. xli, 272pp. Dust jacket in a new mylar cover. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Near Fine. 8vo-8"-9" Tall.
Add this copy of The Aztec Kings: the Construction of Rulership in to cart. $67.06, good condition, Sold by Anybook rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1989 by The University of Arizona Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 750grams, ISBN: 0816510954.
Add this copy of The Aztec Kings: the Construction of Rulership in to cart. $98.76, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 1989 by University of Arizona Press.
Gillespies study of the ethnohistorical sources describing the royal lineage of the Aztec kings is an eyeopener. Through a careful assessment of the sources she shows as that most of what we thought we knew about the aztec kings is in fact closer to myth than to what we call history. She shows that what we thought was a factual rendering of history is often better interpreted as post factum rationalizations by the aztec history tellers who mixed myth with their cyclical understanding of time in order to let the history repeat it self. In this way for example it seems that Motecuzoma I was named after his descendent Motecuzoma II and not vice versa! Her skillful analyses manages to cast oubt on several very important points of aztec history which have previously been taken as well established fact.
The book is a must-read for any one who is interested in aztec and mesoamerican history - it teaches the often forgot lesson that most of the sources were written by people who had a very different understanding of historywriting than we have and that this is of course shows in the works.
