"Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico" presents seven dramas from the first truly American theater. Composed in Nahuatl during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of these plays survive only in later copies. Five are morality plays. Presenting Christian views of moral reform, death, judgment, and punishment for sin, they reveal how these themes were adapted into Nahua culture. The other two plays dramatize biblical narratives: the stories of Abraham and Isaac and of the three wise men.

In this volume, Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart offer faithful transcriptions of the Nahuatl as well as new English translations of these remarkable dramas. Accompanying the plays are four interpretive essays and a foreword that broaden our understanding of these rare works.

"This volume is the first in a four-volume set entitled "Nahuatl Theater," edited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart"

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An Anthology of Mesoamerican Literature, Pre-Columbian to the Present

The first anthology in any language to represent the full trajectory of this remarkable literature.

From new interpretations of the glyphic writings of the Maya through the poetic response to events in modern Chiapas, here is a history of Mexico and Central America from the Indian point of view. In these pages the reader will encounter, often in new translations, the deeply affecting Aztec poems, the horrific battles of conquest, and the thoughtful philosophy of the Mayan "bible," the Popol Vuh. Full, clear introductions make this extraordinary material accessible to all readers. In the Language of Kings is a gemstone of cultural strength for those who trace their ancestry to Mesoamerica, as well as an essential resource for historians and anthropologists. Above all, it is literature: intimate, grand, painful, proud, and finally renascent in the new awakening of the original peoples of Mesoamerica.

"[A] magnum opus of Mesoamerican literature...achieve[s] nothing less than the human and divine."—Bomb

He was sent from Spain on a religious crusade to Mexico to "detect the sickness of idolatry," but Bernardino de Sahagun (c. 1499-1590) instead became the first anthropologist of the New World. The Franciscan monk developed a deep appreciation for Aztec culture and the Nahuatl language. In this biography, Miguel Leon-Portilla presents the life story of a fascinating man who came to Mexico intent on changing the traditions and cultures he encountered but instead ended up working to preserve them, even at the cost of persecution.

Sahagun was responsible for documenting numerous ancient texts and other native testimonies. He persevered in his efforts to study the native Aztecs until he had developed his own research methodology, becoming a pioneer of anthropology. Sahagun formed a school of Nahua scribes and labored with them for more than sixty years to transcribe the pre-conquest language and culture of the Nahuas. His rich legacy, our most comprehensive account of the Aztecs, is contained in his "Primeros Memoriales" (1561) and "Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espana" (1577).

Near the end of his life at age 91, Sahagun became so protective of the Aztecs that when he died, his former Indian students and many others felt deeply affected.

Translated into English by Mauricio J. Mixco, Leon-Portilla's absorbing account presents Sahagun as a complex individual-a man of his times yet a pioneer in many ways.

Who were the poets of Mexico in the days of Aztec splendor? What were the poems of a culture so different from our own?In this first English-language translation of a significant corpus of Nahuatl poetry into English, an expansion of his classic Trece poetas del mundo azteca, Miguel Leon-Portilla was assisted in his rethinking, augmenting, and rewriting in English by Grace Lobanov. Biographies of fifteen composers of Nahuatl verse and analyses of their work are followed by their extant poems in Nahuatl and in English. The poets - fourteen men and one woman - lived in the central highlands of Mexico and spoke Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, Texcocans, Tlaxcalans, and several other chiefdoms. These authors of ""flower and song"" (a Nahuatl metaphor for poetry, art, and symbolism) lived during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Sources for the poems included indigenous ""codices,"" books of songs"" now unfortunately lost, and renditions of them preserved by the Nahuatl oral tradition, which survived the Spanish Conquest and were recorded by several young natives in two manuscripts.

In this second English-language edition of one of his most notable works, Miguel Leon-Portilla explores the Maya Indians' remarkable concepts of time. At the book's first appearance Evon Z. Vogt, Curator of Middle American Ethnology in Harvard University, predicted that it would become "a classic in anthropology," a prediction borne out by the continuing critical attention given to it by leading scholars.

Like no other people in history, the ancient Maya were obsessed by the study of time. Their sages framed its cycles with tireless exactitude. Yet their preoccupation with time was not limited to calendrics; it was a central trait in their evolving culture.

In this absorbing work Leon-Portilla probes the question, What did time really mean for the ancient Maya in terms of their mythology, religious thought, worldview, and everyday life? In his analysis of key Maya texts and computations, he reveals one of the most elaborate attempts of the human mind to penetrate the secrets of existence.

This volume presents ancient Mexican myths and sacred hymns, lyric poetry, rituals, drama, and various forms of prose, accompanied by informed criticism and comment. The selections come from the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Tarascans of Michoacan, the Otomis of central Mexico, and others. They have come down to us from inscriptions on stone, the codices, and accounts written, after the coming of Europeans, of oral traditions.

It is Miguel Leon-Portilla's intention "to bring to contemporary readers an understanding of the marvelous world of symbolism which is the very substance of these early literatures." That he has succeeded is obvious to every reader.

For hundreds of years, the history of the conquest of Mexico and the defeat of the Aztecs has been told in the words of the Spanish victors. Miguel Leon-Portilla has long been at the forefront of expanding that history to include the voices of indigenous peoples. In this new and updated edition of his classic "The Broken Spears", Leon-Portilla has included accounts from native Aztec descendants across the centuries. These texts bear witness to the extraordinary vitality of an oral tradition that preserves the viewpoints of the vanquished instead of the victors. Leon-Portilla's new Postscript reflects upon the critical importance of these unexpected historical accounts.

For at least two millennia before the advent of the Spaniards in 1519, there was a flourishing civilization in central Mexico. During that long span of time a cultural evolution took place which saw a high development of the arts and literature, the formulation of complex religious doctrines, systems of education, and diverse political and social organization. The rich documentation concerning these people, commonly called Aztecs, includes, in addition to a few codices written before the Conquest, thousands of folios in the Nahuatl or Aztec language written by natives after the Conquest. Adapting the Latin alphabet, which they had been taught by the missionary friars, to their native tongue, they recorded poems, chronicles, and traditions. The fundamental concepts of ancient Mexico presented and examined in this book have been taken from more than ninety original Aztec documents. They concern the origin of the universe and of life, conjectures on the mystery of God, the possibility of comprehending things beyond the realm of experience, life after death, and the meaning of education, history, and art. The philosophy of the Nahuatl wise men, which probably stemmed from the ancient doctrines and traditions of the Teotihuacans and Toltecs, quite often reveals profound intuition and in some instances is remarkably -modern.- This English edition is not a direct translation of the original Spanish, but an adaptation and rewriting of the text for the English-speaking reader.