Paperback : $58.41
The pre-Hispanic Mixtec people of Mexico recorded political and religious history, including the biographies and genealogies of their rulers, in pictograms on hand-painted, screen-fold manuscripts known as codices. Functioning rather like movie production storyboards, the codices served as outlines of oral traditions to stimulate the memories of bards who knew the complete narratives, which were sung, danced, and performed at elite functions. Centuries later we have limited access to those original performances, and all that remains for our codex interpretation is what is painted on the pages-perhaps five to ten percent of their memory-encoded information.
Continuing the pioneering interpretation he began in Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the Heroes of Ancient Oaxaca, Robert Lloyd Williams offers an authoritative guide to the entire contents of the codex in The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Although the reverse document (pages 42-84) has been described in previous literature, the obverse document (pages 1-41) has not been, and it has remained elusive as to narrative. The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall elucidates the three sections of the codex, defines them as to function and content, and provides interpretive and descriptive essays about the Native American history the codex recorded prior to the arrival of Europeans in Mexico and the New World generally. With a full-color reproduction of the entire Codex Zouche-Nuttall and Williams's expert guidance in unlocking its narrative strategies and structures, The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall opens an essential window into the Mixtec social and political cosmos.
Show moreThe pre-Hispanic Mixtec people of Mexico recorded political and religious history, including the biographies and genealogies of their rulers, in pictograms on hand-painted, screen-fold manuscripts known as codices. Functioning rather like movie production storyboards, the codices served as outlines of oral traditions to stimulate the memories of bards who knew the complete narratives, which were sung, danced, and performed at elite functions. Centuries later we have limited access to those original performances, and all that remains for our codex interpretation is what is painted on the pages-perhaps five to ten percent of their memory-encoded information.
Continuing the pioneering interpretation he began in Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan and the Heroes of Ancient Oaxaca, Robert Lloyd Williams offers an authoritative guide to the entire contents of the codex in The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Although the reverse document (pages 42-84) has been described in previous literature, the obverse document (pages 1-41) has not been, and it has remained elusive as to narrative. The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall elucidates the three sections of the codex, defines them as to function and content, and provides interpretive and descriptive essays about the Native American history the codex recorded prior to the arrival of Europeans in Mexico and the New World generally. With a full-color reproduction of the entire Codex Zouche-Nuttall and Williams's expert guidance in unlocking its narrative strategies and structures, The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall opens an essential window into the Mixtec social and political cosmos.
Show moreWith a full-colour reproduction of the entire codex and the first modern commentary in English on the pre-Hispanic history it records, The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall unlocks the social and political cosmos of the ancient Mixtec
Robert Lloyd Williams has studied the Mixtec codices since the 1980s and taught courses on them in the Mixtec Codex Workshop, which he cofounded with John M. D. Pohl, for twelve years. He is presently Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Texas State University–San Marcos.
"Williams' primary aim is to provide the first close reading and explication of the full Codex Zouche-Nuttall in the English language, a task he unquestionably succeeds. The broader appeal of this volume, however, derives from Williams' engagement with questions of meaning and communication: how certain can modern readers be of what this codex says, when it relies almost exclusively on narrative pictography and symbolic tableaux rather than linguistically specific signs? [...] Every serious student of Mesoamerican anthropology or epigraphy should own a copy of this work. More generally, scholars interested in semiotics, literacy, memory and performance will find in The Complete Codex Zouche-Nuttall a fascinating example of how a past society recorded its history in a linguistically 'open' script." - Social Anthropology
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
