The Legend Of Lord Eight Deer

Relates the tale of a powerful conqueror and hero who ruled over the Mixtec people of the Mexican state of Oaxaca between 1063 and 1115. Includes information on how the codices containing the story were deciphered.

Encyclopedic in scope and heroically audacious, The Novel: An Alternative History is the first attempt in over a century to tell the complete story of our most popular literary form. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the novel did not originate in 18th-century England, nor even with Don Quixote, but is coeval with civilization itself. After a pugnacious introduction, in which Moore defends innovative, demanding novelists against their conservative critics, the book relaxes into a world tour of the pre-modern novel, beginning in ancient Egypt and ending in 16th-century China, with many exotic ports-of-call: Greek romances; Roman satires; medieval Sanskrit novels narrated by parrots; Byzantine erotic thrillers; 5000-page Arabian adventure novels; Icelandic sagas; delicate Persian novels in verse; Japanese war stories; even Mayan graphic novels. Throughout, Moore celebrates the innovators in fiction, tracing a continuum between these pre-modern experimentalists and their postmodern progeny. Irreverent, iconoclastic, informative, entertaining-The Novel: An Alternative History is a landmark in literary criticism that will encourage readers to rethink the novel.

In the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican world, histories and collections of ritual knowledge were often presented in the form of painted and folded books now known as codices, and the knowledge itself was encoded into pictographs. Eight codices have survived from the Mixtec peoples of ancient Oaxaca, Mexico; a part of one of them, the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, is the subject of this book. As a group, the Mixtec codices contain the longest detailed histories and royal genealogies known for any indigenous people in the western hemisphere. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall offers a unique window into how the Mixtecs themselves viewed their social and political cosmos without the bias of western European interpretation. At the same time, however, the complex calendrical information recorded in the Zouche-Nuttall has made it resistant to historical, chronological analysis, thereby rendering its narrative obscure. In this pathfinding work, Robert Lloyd Williams presents a methodology for reading the Codex Zouche-Nuttall that unlocks its essentially linear historical chronology. Recognizing that the codex is a combination of history in the European sense and the timelessness of myth in the Native American sense, he brings to vivid life the history of Lord Eight Wind of Suchixtlan (AD 935–1027), a ruler with the attributes of both man and deity, as well as other heroic Oaxacan figures. Williams also provides context for the history of Lord Eight Wind through essays dealing with Mixtec ceremonial rites and social structure, drawn from information in five surviving Mixtec codices.

Approaching sorcery as highly rational and rooted in significant social and cultural values, Sorcery in Mesoamerica examines and reconstructs the original indigenous logic behind it, analyzing manifestations from the Classic Maya to the ethnographic present. While the topic of sorcery and witchcraft in anthropology is well developed in other areas of the world, it has received little academic attention in Mexico and Central America until now. In each chapter, preeminent scholars of ritual and belief ask very different questions about what exactly sorcery is in Mesoamerica. Contributors consider linguistic and visual aspects of sorcery and witchcraft, such as the terminology in Aztec semantics and dictionaries of the Kaqchiquel and K’iche’ Maya. Others explore the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, including the incorporation by indigenous sorcerers in the Mexican highlands of European perspectives and practices into their belief system. Contributors also examine specific deities, entities, and phenomena, such as the pantheistic Nahua spirit entities called forth to assist healers and rain makers, the categorization of Classic Maya Wahy (“co-essence”) beings, the cult of the Aztec goddess Cihuacoatl, and the recurring relationship between female genitalia and the magical conjuring of a centipede throughout Mesoamerica. Placing the Mesoamerican people in a human context—as engaged in a rational and logical system of behavior—Sorcery inMesoamerica is the first comprehensive study of the subject and an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Mesoamerican culture and religion. Contributors: Lilián González Chévez, John F. Chuchiak IV, Jeremy D. Coltman, Roberto Martínez González, Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, Cecelia F. Klein, Timothy J. Knab, John Monaghan, Jesper Nielsen, John M. D. Pohl, Alan R. Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein Sandstrom, David Stuart

"This volume explores the roots of traditional Oaxacan food, how it has evolved from its Mixtec origins, and how some traditions exist today; the essays included were written by archaeologists, ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and others with an interest in traditional Oaxacan food"--

"The one source that sets reference collections on Latin American studies apart from all other geographic areas of the world.... The Handbook has provided scholars interested in Latin America with a bibliographical source of a quality unavailable to scholars in most other branches of area studies." —Latin American Research Review Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 140 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and research under way in specialized areas. The Handbook of Latin American Studies is the oldest continuing reference work in the field. Lawrence Boudon, of the Library of Congress Hispanic Division, has been the editor since 2000, and Katherine D. McCann has been assistant editor since 1999. The subject categories for Volume 61 are as follows: AnthropologyEconomicsGeographyGovernment and PoliticsPolitical EconomyInternational RelationsSociology

The period we know as the Middle Ages, roughly the years 400–1400, saw the formation of ideas and institutions that mark modern societies. Developments as disparate as the foundation of Islam and the emergence of the middle class occurred during this pivotal millennium. Although historical study of the Middle Ages has traditionally focused on Western Europe, modern historians recognize the complex global nature of this era. For all major world regions, this three-volume work offers in-depth essays on broad themes, short entries on specific topics, and carefully selected primary documents to help readers more fully understand this critically important period. Edited by Joyce Salisbury, who is general editor of the award-winning Greenwood Encyclopedia of Daily Life, and written by Professor Salisbury and a series of prominent historians with regional expertise, Greenwood Encyclopedia of Global Medieval Life and Culture comprises three volumes covering the following areas of the globe: Volume 1:Europe and the Americas Volume 2: Islam and Africa Volume 3: Asia and Oceania Each regional section comprises seven in-depth essays covering the following broad topics and concluding with bibliographies of important and current information resources: Historical Overview of the Region, Religion, Economy, The Arts, Society, Science and Technology, and Global Ties. The Global Ties essays trace the political, social, economic, religious, technological, or commercial connections that existed between the region under discussion and any other world regions during the Middle Ages. Each regional section also includes a series of brief entries covering people, events, developments, and concepts mentioned in the in-depth essays. Examples of entry topics include the following: Berbers, Emperor Harsha, Ethiopian Christianity, Flowery Warfare, Footbinding, Hildegard of Bingen, Jainism, Jihad, Maya Collapse, Neo-Confucianism, Romanesque, and Sharia. A series of sidebars in each section will provide lists, graphs, charts, and other useful data relating to the region. Each section will also be illustrated and will include a selection of interesting primary documents that further illustrate the main themes addressed in the in-depth essays. Cross-references within the sections and a detailed subject index will also help readers access information in the essays and short entries.

Altera Roma explores the confrontation of two cultures, European and Amerindian, and two empires, Spanish and Aztec. In an age of exploration and conquest, Spanish soldiers, missionaries, and merchants brought an array of cultural preconceptions. Their encounter with Aztec civilization coincided with Europe's rediscovery of classical antiquity, and Tenochtitlan came to be regarded a "second Rome," or altera Roma. Iberia's past as the Roman province of Hispania served to both guide and critique the Spanish overseas mission. The dialogue that emerged between the Old World and the New World shaped a dual heritage into the unique culture of Nueva Espana. In this volume, ten eminent historians and archaeologists examine the analogies between empires widely separated in time and place and consider how monumental art and architecture created "theater states," a strategy that links ancient Rome, Hapsburg Spain, preconquest Mexico, and other imperial regimes.