The Florentine Codex : General History of the Things of New Spain (12 Volume Set) [Hardcover]

Arthur J. O. Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2002 | ISBN-10: 087480082X | ISBN-13: 978-0874800821

Two of the world’s leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagún’s monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagún’s Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished contributions in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics.

Written between 1540 and 1585, the Florentine Codex (so named because the manuscript has been part of the Laurentian Library’s collections since at least 1791) is the most authoritative statement we have of the Aztecs’ lifeways and traditionsa rich and intimate yet panoramic view of a doomed people.

The Florentine Codex is divided by subject area into twelve books and includes over 2,000 illustrations drawn by Nahua artists in the sixteenth century.

This introduction to the Florentine Codex contains the original prologues to each volume written by Bernadino de Sahagun, which detail his intentions and personal experiences in compiling the Codex. Authors Dibble and Anderson dig into Sahagun’s past in “Sahagun’s Historia” and “Sahagun: Career and Character,” and discuss dating the Codex in “The Watermarks in the Florentine Codex.” This volume also includes indices of subject matter, persons and deities, and places for all twelve books.

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries.”—Choice
 

“A great scholarly enterprise.”—New Mexico Historical Review
 

“Bringing the knowledge of modern scholarship to bear on their materials, the translators have been able to illuminate many obscurities in the text. The complete series of volumes is a landmark of scholarly achievement.”—The New Mexican
 

“This publication of Sahagún makes available to scholars and their students alike the original Nahuatl text for comparison with the more easily accessible Spanish text, which is in many places merely an abridgment or précis of the original. A whole series of native sources for the study of Mexican pre-conquest history is now at hand for a field of historical study formerly restricted to a small number of investigators. A whole chapter of the cultural history of early Colonial Mexico is unfolding before us. [The Codex is] an impressive monument to Spanish humanism in the sixteenth-century New World.”—The Hispanic American Historical Review
 

“Sahagún emerges as the indisputable founder of ethnographic science. The accomplishments of the joint translators, Dibble and Anderson, will surely rank among the greatest achievements of American ethnohistorical scholarship.”—Natural History
 

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 12 pages
• Publisher: University of Utah Press (January 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 087480082X
• ISBN-13: 978-0874800821
• Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 12.7 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 24 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,386,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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