Overview

Death and Life in Colonial Nahua Mexico presents seven dramas from the first truly American theater. Composed in Nahuatl during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of these plays survive only in later copies. Five are morality plays. Presenting Christian views of moral reform, death, judgment, and punishment for sin, they reveal how these themes were adapted into Nahua culture. The other two plays dramatize biblical narratives: the stories of Abraham and Isaac and of the three wise men.In this volume, Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart offer faithful transcriptions of the Nahuatl as well as new English translations of these remarkable dramas. Accompanying the plays are four interpretive essays and a foreword that broaden our understanding of these rare works. This volume is the first in a four-volume set entitled Nahuatl Theater, edited by Barry D. Sell and Louise M. Burkhart  

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9780806136332

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Reviews

Plays are an attractive, integral part of she Nahuatl language corpus, and editors Sell and Burkhart improve radically on all predecessors in their translations and critical apparatus. The transcriptions are virtually definitive.

"""""Plays are an attractive, integral part of she Nahuatl language corpus, and editors Sell and Burkhart improve radically on all predecessors in their translations and critical apparatus. The transcriptions are virtually definitive."""

Author Information

Louise M. Burkhart is Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York, Albany, and co-editor and co-translator of Nahuatl Theater, the four-volume set of plays.|Director of the Inter-American Indian Institute in Mexico City, Miguel León-Portilla is a significant young Mexican scholar. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees (summa cum laude) form Loyola University at Los Angeles and the Ph.D. from the National University of Mexico. La filosofía náhuatl: estudiada en sus fuentes, the Spanish version of this book, received high praise from both Mexican and American scholars.

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