 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Abstracts
New Peoples, New Lands
J.H. Elliot
Aztec Kings and the Codex Durán:
The Metaphorical Underpinnings of Rulership
Emily Umberger
Aztec scribes respond to Europe, furthering an ancient literary tradition
Gordon Brotherston
Out of the Past: Ancient Clothing Includences in Contemporary Indian Villages
Patricia Anawalt
In conversation with Arara
Adrian Locke, curator of Aztecs
In Memoriam: Haroldo de Campos
Isobel Whitelegg
Brazilian avant-garde: the epic of Haroldo de Campos
Donaldo Schüler
New Peoples, New Lands
J.H. Elliot
Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History, University of Oxford, UK.
This paper aims to set the conquest and colonization of Mexico into the context of developments generated be Spain's first colonial experiments in the Caribbean. Here in the early sixteenth century the Spaniards found themselves faced with the double challenge of incorporating new lands into a transatlantic institutional framework, and new peoples into a European cultural framework. The paper then goes on to consider how these Caribbean precedents were followed or modified in the light of conditions in Mexico in the post-conquest period, and how and why the early hopes of friars and royal officials ended in disappointment.
Aztec Kings and the Codex Durán: The Metaphorical Underpinnings of Rulership
Emily Umberger
Associate Professor, School of Art, Arizona State University, USA
The article discusses the 1473 Civil War between the two cities that formed the capital of the Aztec Empire, Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, as presented in the Codex Durán. The featured players are the kings of the two cities, Axayacatl and Moquihuix, respectively. The methodology combines the analysis of texts, manuscript images, and archaeology to argue the thesis that the Western style literal rendition of the events in the colonial texts and images include remnants of the pre-Conquest symbolic thought behind the choreography of the events. Originally, I believe, the war was staged as much as possible to follow the allegorical story of the god Huitzilopochtli's battle and defeat of his sister Coyolxauhqui at the mythical mountain of Coatepetl. The war featured two battles, fought in Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. In the first, the Tlatelolca tried to take the Tenochca Templo Mayor (Great Temple), that city's image of Coatepetl, and failed. In the second, the Tenochca succeeded in capturing the Tlatelolca Great Temple, a second Coatepetl, and their leader, Axayacatl, threw Moquihuix from the temple pyramid, just as Huitzilopochtli had thrown Coyolxauhqui from the mountain. The Tlatelolca temple was then demolished and various humiliations were practiced against the defeated, including, I suggest, the bringing of the remains of their cremated leaders to Tenochtitlan for burial at the foot of what was now the true (and only functioning) Coatepetl, beside a monumental image of the dead goddess. Both the burials and the monument were found archaeologically on the IVb level of the Tenochtitlan Great Temple in 1978. The evidences, admittedly circumstantial, that identify one of these burials as Moquihuix are its position in the left-hand vessel at the foot of the temple and its contents, a necklace of duck heads, a standard Aztec burial item that can be matched to one humiliation described in the text. The significance of this humiliation is suggested by its imagery being highlighted at both the beginning and end of the war. Finally, the narration of both the mythical prototype and the war itself can be said to have followed general symbolic patterns in Aztec thought that focused on the nature and fate of rulers.
Aztec scribes respond to Europe, furthering an ancient literary tradition
Gordon Brotherston
Research Professor at the University of Essex, where he came in 1965 and helped establish the Department of Literature and the Latin American programme. He is also Professor at Stanford University, and the author of numerous books and papers on native texts from Native America, particularly Mexico (Book of the Fourth World, 1992; Painted Books from Mexico,1995).
Mexican books of paper and skin, written before the fall of Tenochtitlan or written wholly within the native tradition, are known today only in small numbers. Yet the corpus is large enough for us to comment on the script they use - tlacuilolli - and to note certain reading conventions common to them all, regardless of regional and cultural differences. Of particular interest are those codices written in tlacuilolli which respond in detail to the facts of the European invasion in the 16th century. Among Aztec records of this kind, Mexicanus Codex, now in Paris, stands out as a little-unexplored source of information about the interface between the resident and the imported calendrical systems. It offers an astoundingly ingenious critique of the latter, prompted by the defects and failures of imagination that led to the Gregorian Reform of 1582.
Out of the Past: Ancient Clothing Includences in Contemporary Indian Villages
Patricia Rieff Anawalt
Director, Center for the Study of Regional Dress, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California at Los Angeles, USA
This presentation is based on five field seasons in a mountainous region of eastern Central Mexico known as the Sierra Norte de Puebla where Indian women weave and wear prehispanic-style garments. In addition to modern-day versions of the female quechquemitl and wrap-around skirt, weavers also still produce the male xicolli; both garments are repeatedly depicted in the codices. One might assume that the back-strap weaving of these ancient clothing styles would be the textile focus of the Sierra but there is another phenomenon that is of even more interest. The region's most ubiquitous and widely-discussed clothing item is a blouse descended from the European chemise. This cut-and-sewn tailored garment is worn by all Sierran females, with or without an accompanying quechquemitl over it. The most unusual aspect of these Colonial-style blouses is the time, effort and consideration that goes into decorating them: the craft emphasis of the Sierra is embroidery. Although a wide range of embroidery motifs are used around the neck and sleeves of the European-derived garments, there is an intriguing figural group that keeps reappearing: a female accompanied by deer, dogs and/or birds. A deeper understanding of this scene-as well as other Sierran embroidery practices-emerges from the study of European folk costumes. Such garments are sometimes decorated with magical-religious embroideries that have served protective and fertility-enhancing functions for millennia. Among these motifs is a female figure accompanied by beast and/or bird attendants, an ancient earth mother whose image can be traced back to the Neolithic.
In Conversation with Arara..
Adrian Locke, curator of Aztecs
An interview with one of Aztecs' curators, Adrian Locke, provides some background information on how the exhibition came about, how it was received and some of the critical issues raised by the show.
In Memoriam: Haroldo de Campos
Isobel Whitelegg
Co-Editor of Arara
To commemorate Haroldo De Campos, who died this summer at the age of 74, we have decided to publish a brief introduction to his life and work, together with sources for further research, and a paper on De Campos (see below) by Brazilian scholar Donaldo Schüler.
Brazilian avant-garde: the epic of Haroldo de Campos
Donaldo Schüler
Donaldo Schüler is a scholar of Brazilian and Greek literature, and a published author and poet. Throughout his career at the Universidad Federal do Rio Grande do Sul he has published numerous essays and translations, including that of Sophocles' Antigone The fourth and final volume of his translation of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake into Portugese is published this year.
"Conscious of our failures, we are obliged, as poets of the space in which we live, to construct what not yet exists."
In this paper - which will form a chapter of his forthcoming study on Brazilian literary vanguards - Schüler examines Haroldo's later work in prose. He reveals how his trans-creation of epic narratives - from the Old Testament to Homer - can be understood in relation to De Campos' own re-production of the epic form in works such Finismundo, a última viagem (which, preserving the reference to Finneganswake by Joyce, may be translated as 'Finisworld, the last voyage') and the Galaxiás (Galaxies) cycle.
In his careful examination of Haroldo's process of translation, Schüler demonstrates how De Campos' prised open the etymology of Hebrew and Greek in order to insert complex contemporary understandings of creation and nothingness into ancient epic verse.
 |
|
 |