Aztec Latin

Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico

Inbunden, Engelska, 2024

AvAndrew Laird,Brown University) Laird, Andrew (John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities and Professor of Hispanic Studies, John Rowe Workman Distinguished Professor of Classics and Humanities and Professor of Hispanic Studies

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In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and cultural exchanges that would result from that initiative are the subject of this book. Aztec Latin highlights the importance of Renaissance humanist education for early colonial indigenous history, showing how practices central to humanism — the cultivation of eloquence, the training of leaders, scholarly translation, and antiquarian research — were transformed in New Spain to serve Indian elites as well as the Spanish authorities and religious orders. While Franciscan friars, inspired by Erasmus' ideal of a common tongue, applied principles of Latin grammar to Amerindian languages, native scholars translated the Gospels, a range of devotional literature, and even Aesop's fables into the Mexican language of Nahuatl. They also produced significant new writings in Latin and Nahuatl, adorning accounts of their ancestral past with parallels from Greek and Roman history and importing themes from classical and Christian sources to interpret pre-Hispanic customs and beliefs. Aztec Latin reveals the full extent to which the first Mexican authors mastered and made use of European learning and provides a timely reassessment of what those indigenous authors really achieved.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2024-08-29
Mått155 x 226 x 38 mm
Vikt862 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor488
FörlagOUP USA
ISBN9780197586358
UtmärkelserWinner, The Charles J. Goodwin Award of Merit, Society for Classical Studies Winner, Miriam Usher Chrisman Prize for History from the Sixteenth Century Society

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PrefaceAcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction 1. Faith, politics and the pursuit of humanity: The first scholars in New Spain 2. Persuasion for a pagan audience: Rhetoric, memory and action in missionary writing 3. Between Babel and Utopia: Renaissance grammar and Amerindian languages4. Education of the indigenous nobility: The Imperial College of Santa Cruz at Santiago Tlatelolco5. From the Evangelia et Epistolae to the Huehuetlahtolli: Indian Latinists and the creation of Nahuatl literature 6. Humanism and ethnohistory: Petitions in Latin from Tlacopan and Azcapotzalco 7. A mirror for Mexican princes: The Nahuatl translation of Aesop's Fables 8. Aztec gods and orators: Classical learning and indigenous agency in the Florentine Codex 9. Universal histories for posterity: Native chroniclers and their European sources10. Conclusions and EnvoiAppendix 1: Catalogues and ConspectusesAppendix 2: Texts and Translations Appendix 3: Excursus: Antonio Valeriano and the Virgin of GuadalupeBibliographyIndex

The encounter of the Nahua with Latin and the literate culture of the Renaissance is masterfully explored in this book. Medical treatises, vocabularies, grammars, biblical translations, pedagogical manuals, and edifying dialogues—some created to spread Christianity and others to account for the pre-Hispanic past—all pass under the careful gaze of the author, who manages to reconstruct the humanistic environment in which they were produced. With an unusual mix of directness and erudition, Andrew Laird changes our perspective and sheds new light on some of the most important works and personalities of sixteenth-century Mexico.

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