The Essential Codex Mendoza - Softcover

Berdan, Frances F

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520204549 ISBN 13: 9780520204546

Publisher: University of California Press, 1997

Synopsis

At last, this paperback adaptation of "The Codex Mendoza" places the most comprehensive, most extensively illustrated document of Aztec civilization within reach of a broad audience. Compiled in Mexico City around 1541 under the supervision of Spanish clerics, the codex was intended to inform King Charles V about his newly conquered subjects. The manuscript contains pictorial accounts of Aztec emperors' conquests and tribute paid by the conquered, as well as an ethnographic record of Aztec daily life from cradle to grave. This publication is an unsurpassed source of information about Aztec history, geography, economy, social and political organization, glyphic writing, costumes, textiles, military attire, and indigenous art styles."The Essential Codex Mendoza" combines volumes 2 and 4 of the four-volume edition of "The Codex Mendoza" published by the University of California Press in 1992. That publication includes a collection of interpretations and appendices (volume 1), page-by-page descriptions of the codex (volume 3), a colour facsimile of "Codex Mendoza" (volume 2), and parallel-image replicas of each pictorial folio with transcriptions and translations of the Spanish commentaries and translations of the Spanish glosses (volume 4). Volumes 2 and 4 thus provide, in detail, the basic pictorial and descriptive information contained in the original codex; these are the 'essentials' that make up the paperback edition. With the exception of a few minor emendations, this current book reproduces the pages of these two 1992 volumes, plus sixteen colour folios from the facsimile, volume 3.

About this title

About the Author

Frances F. Berdan is Chair and Professor of Anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino. Her books include The Aztecs of Central Mexico (1982) and The Tlaxcalan Actas (with James Lockhart & Arthur J. O. Anderson, 1986). Patricia Rieff Anawalt is Director of the Center for the Study of Regional Dress, Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Indian Clothing Before Cortés (1981).

From the Back Cover

"A virtual treasure-trove of ethnographic detail on selected aspects of Aztec culture and society. . . . The new facsimile edition places this important source more directly in the mainstream of ethnohistorical research."—H. R. Harvey, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"By far the most complete source on the Mendoza ever published [with] a group of contributors of very high caliber. . . . No work I am aware of comes even close to combining a reproduction of the document with the various commentaries on its production, its historical background, authorship, and social context. These discussions make the work highly accessible to non-specialists."—Richard E. Blanton, Purdue University

From the Inside Flap

"A virtual treasure-trove of ethnographic detail on selected aspects of Aztec culture and society. . . . The new facsimile edition places this important source more directly in the mainstream of ethnohistorical research."—H. R. Harvey, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"By far the most complete source on the Mendoza ever published [with] a group of contributors of very high caliber. . . . No work I am aware of comes even close to combining a reproduction of the document with the various commentaries on its production, its historical background, authorship, and social context. These discussions make the work highly accessible to non-specialists."—Richard E. Blanton, Purdue University

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520204549
• ISBN 13: 9780520204546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416