Customer Reviews

Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript

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"The 16th-century Codex Telleriano-Remensis was a rare colonial enterprise: an intercultural exchange between Indian artists and Spanish overseers. It was created in an attempt to understand Aztec culture in light of its transformed present. The result was a well-organized manuscript with invaluable information about the Aztec calendar, mythology, rituals, history, and politics. Through the centuries, the Codex has been a fruitful source of knowledge for academics and a source of cultural identity and power for the diminishing Aztec (Nahua) survivors. This new edition includes a full-color photographic facsimile of the entire Codex as well as an English translation of the Spanish commentaries that explain the work's intense visual imagery. It contains over 100 pages of brilliant visions of bellicose earth-mother goddesses and other mythical creatures. [Quiñones] Keber is professor of art history at Baruch College and The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She provides a comprehensive text that complements these images with core information about Aztec culture and gives the reader a deeper appreciation for the art of Aztec manuscript painting. Most people will never see the original manuscript, now well guarded at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, but [Quiñones] Keber provides the immediacy and excitement of actually holding a copy of the ancient text. She has opened a window onto a unique cultural fusion born of the encounter between old and new worlds. Silvia Heredia '95C"

"Few codices exist that provide scholars of the Aztecs (Nahuas) with a pictorial version of native depiction of the Aztecs' origins, culture, and history prior to and after the Spanish conquest that began in 1519. Among them is a manuscript now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale of France, the so-called Codex Telleriano-Remensis, named after the man who contributed it to the library of Louis XIV....Fifty folios in length, this fragile and irreplaceable source was microfilmed in color in 1990. Thanks to the interest of the University of Texas Press and a subvention from the Getty Grant Program, a full-color published facsimile of the images and commentary is now available to scholars, students, and others fascinated by the Aztecs. Splendidly annotated by Dr. Quiñones Keber, a well-known specialist in Mesoamerican art and iconography, this volume truly must be seen to be fully appreciated...."

"....In this universe of painted manuscripts [from ancient Mexico) an extraordinary volume has recently appeared--a study of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis by Eloise Quiñones Keber. This primary source for the study of Aztec history and ritual is one of the few surviving codices from this culture and presents to the reader a treasury of information about the people of Mesoamerica. This high-quality facimile edition focuses especially on the Aztecs prior to and after the Conquest. But above all, congratulations go to Quiñones Keber, whose excellent work and years of dedication and research have been recognized by the granting of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, given...in 1996 for her 'outstanding contribution to humanistic learning.' The University of Texas Press is also to be congratulated for this superior production, as is the Getty Foundation, which has made the fine volume available to scholars, libraires, and art lovers...."

"....In this magnificently illustrated work with a facsimile reproduction of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Eloise Quiñones Keber has presented an invaluable first-time publication of the entire codex along with an extensive scholarly commentary, sixteenth-century Spanish annotations, and an English translation of its text....highly recommended...."

"....In this universe of painted manuscripts [from ancient Mexico) an extraordinary volume has recently appeared--a study of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis by Eloise Quiñones Keber. This primary source for the study of Aztec history and ritual is one of the few surviving codices from this culture and presents to the reader a treasury of information about the people of Mesoamerica. This high-quality facimile edition focuses especially on the Aztecs prior to and after the Conquest. But above all, congratulations go to Quiñones Keber, whose excellent work and years of dedication and research have been recognized by the granting of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, given...in 1996 for her 'outstanding contribution to humanistic learning.' The University of Texas Press is also to be congratulated for this superior production, as is the Getty Foundation, which has made the fine volume available to scholars, libraires, and art lovers...."

Couple with the Herbal Codex, this lays the superfluous groundwork for the understanding of Spanish/Aztec integration and the loss of indigeniuos knowledge. What this really does is preserves the spiritual awareness the Pre Meso-American people knew as a intimate interaction with Mother Earth/Father Sky representative gods. A must for those needing to know where your place is in the world order and for those whose spiritual growth has stopped. Leads you to the Aztec Calender and, with little promting, shows the coorelational ideas of modern myths, legends, and assumptions that modern religions make. Does time really have one dimension? Does the etheral body remain on this plain or steps to make its assendence to the Higher Divine? With little knowledge of ritual rites, show materialism is a major modern flaw.This helps to bridge old mythogical rituals into understandable terms.