Sister Stories Bibliography and Sources
A vast literature exists on Aztec society. Much of it is internally contradictory, since no one can reconcile all the material that stems from the different Mexican voices engaged in dialogue in the sixteenth century with Spanish invaders. The following selection includes synthetic works that try to present coherent views of Aztec society, and specific works that illuminate women's place in that society.
(A bibliography of works referred to in the postmodern voices in Sister Stories follows the Aztec source list below.)
Betty Ann Brown ("Seen but not heard: Women in Aztec ritual--the Sahagun texts". Pages 119-154 in Text and Image in pre-Columbian Art, edited by Janet C. Berlo, BAR International Series 180, 1983) demonstrates that the text of the Florentine Codex presents more restricted images of women's roles than the accompanying paintings, most likely as a result of Sahagun's selection as compiler.
Elizabeth Brumfiel explores aspects of political economy, and in particular the varied situations of women, in "Weaving and cooking: Women's production in Aztec Mexico" (pp. 224-251 in Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited by Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey, Basil Blackwell, 1991).
Louise Burkhart, in "Mexica women on the home front" (Indian Women of Early Mexico, edited by S. Schroeder, S. Wood and R. Haskett, pp. 25-54; University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) explores how the homework of women, including sweeping, was integral to Mexica ritual and politics.
The Codex Mendoza is a sixteenth-century manuscript painted to provide the Spanish government with information necessary to govern the conquered Aztec empire. It includes pages listing tribute goods, by town, a retelling of the legendary history of the Aztecs, and a sketch of idealized lives of men and women. The pictures are annotated in Nahuatl written with the roman alphabet. Between the annotations and the details of the images, there is a wealth of information about Aztec life in this source.
Inga Clendinnen's Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1991) explores the psychology of imperial rule and its intrusion throughout everyday life, achieved by the glorification of the warrior and participation in human sacrifice.
Nigel Davies' The Aztecs: A History (University of Oklahoma Press, 1973) reconstructs a conventional European history of battles and their strategies from legendary histories written after the Spanish conquest.
Susan Gillespie's Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History (University of Arizona, 1989) takes apart the historical traditions to expose a repeated theme of succession to political power through defeat, resurgence, and marital alliance.
Rosemary Joyce, "Girling the girl and boying the boy: the production of adulthood in ancient Mesoamerica" (World Archaeology 31:473-483; 2000) and "Becoming Human: Body and Person in Aztec Tenochtitlan" (Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, Ch. 5; University of Texas Press, 2000) provides a detailed discussion of domestic and public life in the capital city of the Aztecs.
Susan Kellogg's analysis of Aztec kinship is discussed in "Cognatic kinship and religion: Women in Aztec society" (pp. 666-681 inSmoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan, edited by Kathryn Josserand and Karen Dakin, BAR International Series 402, 1988).
Cecelia Klein has written extensively on the imagery of the conquered woman (1988, Rethinking Cihuacoatl: Aztec Political Imagery of the Conquered Woman, in Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan, edited by J. K. Josserand and K. Dakin, pp. 237-277, BAR, Oxford; 1993 Shield women: resolution of an Aztec gender paradox, in Current Topics in Aztec Studies: Essays in Honor of Dr. H. B. Nicholson, edited by Alana Cordy-Collins and Douglas Sharon, pp. 39-64, San Diego Museum of Man; 1994, Fighting with femininity: gender and war in Aztec Mexico, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 24:219-253) and deities of ambiguous gender (1976, The Face of the Earth: Frontality in Two-dimensional Mesoamerican Art, Garland, New York; 1980, Who was Tlaloc? Journal of Latin American Lore 6(2):155-204) among the Aztecs:
The Work of Bernardino de Sahagun: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-century Aztec Mexico, edited by J. Jorge Klor de Alva, Henry B. Nicholson, and Eloise Qui–ones Keber (Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York, Albany, 1988) provides historical context for the compiler of the Florentine Codex.
Miguel Leon-Portilla's Aztec Thought and Culture (University of Oklahoma, 1963) is an articulately presented argument for an abstract theology and philosophy present in Aztec literary sources.
In Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World (University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), Miguel León-Portilla offers translations and biographies of a range of named Aztec poets, including Macuilxochitzin, daughter of the fifteenth-century Mexica cihuacoatl, Tlacaelel.
Eduardo Matos provides lavishly illustrated descriptions of the excavations he directed at the Great Temple of the Aztecs: Treasures of Tenochtitlan (Thames and Hudson, 1988).
Geoffrey and Sharisse McCafferty ("Powerful Women and the Myth of Male Dominance in Aztec Society", Archaeological Review From Cambridge 7:45-59, 1988; and "Spinning and weaving as female gender identity in Post-Classic Mexico", in Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by J. C. Berlo, M. Schevill, and E. B. Dwyer, pp. 19-44; Garland Publishing, 1991) argue that Aztec women actively resisted their ideological subordination through celebration of their own work.
Thelma Sullivan was one of the first scholars to write about some of the texts included here, in
"O precious necklace, o quetzal feather! Aztec pregnancy and childbirth orations" (Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics n. s. 4:38-52, 1980).
Richard Townsend's The Aztecs (Thames and Hudson, 1993) examines the concepts that supported Aztec art and society in light of contemporary concerns about the literal interpretation of texts. |
Other references within Sister Stories:
Cannon, Moya. "Taom." in The Midland Review 3. Winter 1986.
Chatwin, Bruce.Songlines, New York: Penguin. 1987
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1988.
Derrida, "The Question of Style," translated by Ruben Berezdivin, in David B. Allison, ed., The New Nietzsche, Cambridge, MA and London, England: The MIT Press. 1985.
Forster, E. M. Howard's End.
Guru Rinpoche (according to Karma-Lingpa). The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thotrol). Translation and commentary by Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa. Boston & London: Shambhala Publications. 1992.
Heilbrun, Carolyn G. Writing a Woman's Life. New York: Ballantine Books. 1988.
Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Vintage Books. 1979.
Joyce, Michael. Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. 2000
Lippard, Lucy. Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory. New York: Pantheon. 1983.
Logan, Onnie Lee. Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story, as told to Katherine Clark. New York: Dutton. 1989
Philippi, Donald L. Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Princeton University Press and University of Tokyo Press. 1979.
Piecework , ed. Veronica Patterson (September/October 1993, November/December 1993, January/February 1994) Loveland, CO: Interweave Press
Santillana, Giorgio de, and Hertha von Dechend Hamlet's Mill, Boston: David R. Godine. 1969.
Walker, Barbara. The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 1983. |
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