Aztecs
An Interpretation

Recreates the culture of the city of Tenochtitlan in its last unthreatened years before it fell to the Spaniards.

Inga Clendinnen (Author)

9781107693562, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 May 2014

574 pages
21.5 x 13.7 x 3.1 cm, 0.85 kg

'This is an outstanding book …' The Times Higher Education Supplement

In 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan, magnificent centre of the Aztec empire, fell to the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Inga Clendinnen's account of the Aztecs recreates the culture of that city in its last unthreatened years. It provides a vividly dramatic analysis of Aztec ceremony as performance art, binding the key experiences and concerns of social existence in the late imperial city to the mannered violence of their ritual killings.

Introduction
Part I. The City: 1. Tenochtitlan: the public image
2. Local perspectives
Part II. Roles: 3. Victims
4. Warriors, priests and merchants
5. The masculine self discovered
6. Wives
7. Mothers
8. The female being revealed
Part III. The Sacred: 9. Aesthetics
10. Ritual: the world transformed, the world revealed
Part IV: 11. Defeat
Epilogue
A question of sources
Monthly ceremonies of the seasonal calendar
The Mexica pantheon
Notes
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Hispanic & Latino studies [JFSL4], History of the Americas [HBJK], General & world history [HBG]