Amazon.com: Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God: Neil Baldwin: Books

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
"He was the wind, he was the guide, the roadsweeper of the rain gods, of the masters of water, of those who brought rain."

So wrote the Spanish priest Bernardo de Sahagún of the pale-skinned Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who, Mexican mythology had it, left his homeland but promised his people that he would one day return to them from the eastern sea. Neil Baldwin, the author of biographies of Thomas Edison and Man Ray, offers an intriguing life of the god--a biography, that is, of Quetzalcoatl as viewed by the Mexican people before and after the European conquest. In doing so, he captures the feel of the Mexican places in which Quetzalcoatl held sway: the temples and pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great fortresses of Mitla and Monte Albán, the ball courts of Chichén Itzá. He also provides a convincing portrait of Aztec and other ancient Mesoamerican lifeways, inviting his readers to share the "fear and terror" those people felt when they entered the god's sacred precincts. Baldwin's sympathetic readings of indigenous texts, coupled with his easy style, make Legends of the Plumed Serpent a fine introduction to ancient Mexico; his account of the god's fortunes after the arrival of the Europeans will also be of interest to students of comparative mythology and religion. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
Baldwin, acclaimed biographer of Edison, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams, jettisoned his "resolutely Eurocentric" outlook 10 years ago, when he first visited Mexico. Mingling travelogue, history and a profound meditation on the clash between Mesoamerican and European settler civilizations, his magnificently illustrated new book is a stunning feat of cross-cultural understanding. At its heart lies the myth of the Plumed Serpent, or Quetzalcoatl?central to the Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec and nearly every other formative Mexican culture?whose temples, sculptures, sacred hymns, poems, rituals and legends celebrated this feathered god as a redemptive hero, bestower of civilization. Criss-crossing cultures and landscapes, Baldwin charts the Plumed Serpent's metamorphosis as a unifying symbol for the ancient Mexican diaspora, as a rallying point for militant resistance to Spanish colonizers and as touchstone in the struggle to construct a creole identity under Spanish rule. Symbol of hope and renewal, Quetzalcoatl was reimagined by 1920s humanist essayists and philosophers like Alfonso Reyes and Martin Luis Guzman, by followers of revolutionary martyr Emiliano Zapata, by obsessed novelist D.H. Lawrence, muralists Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco, modernist painter Rufino Tamayo and by a new generation of contemporary Mexican artists. Besides exploring all these developments with empathy and insight, Baldwin includes a riveting, dramatic account of Hernan Cortes's conquest of Aztec ruler Moctezuma and its devastating aftermath. He also devotes a jolting chapter to "the Indian problem," which is how Mexico's federalist rulers looked upon the native peoples who throughout the 19th century made up more than 60% of the population, a harshly exploited, silent majority. Breathtakingly illustrated with 100 color photographs, engravings, codices and paintings, Baldwin's narrative is both an engaging personal odyssey and a bold reclamation of a cultural landscape.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
According to my handy guidebook, this was supposed to be The Temple of the Old Woman. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn m

Legends of the Plumed Serpent: Biography of a Mexican God (Hardcover)

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