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OverviewFull Product DetailsAuthor: J. M. G. Le Clezio , Teresa Lavender Fagan , Teresa Lavender FaganPublisher: The University of Chicago Press Imprint: University of Chicago Press Dimensions: Width: 1.60cm , Height: 0.20cm , Length: 2.10cm Weight: 0.397kg ISBN: 9780226110028ISBN 10: 0226110028 Pages: 232 Publication Date: 01 December 1993 Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General , Undergraduate Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Stock Indefinitely Availability: In Print Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock. Table of ContentsReviewsWe are lucky to have in Le Clezio a writer of great quality who brings his particular sensibility and talent here to remind us of the very nature of the rituals and myths of the civilizations of ancient Mexico; he provides us with descriptions as precise as they are mysterious. - Le Figaro Le Clezio is an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization. - from the Nobel Prize citation A compelling overview of Amerindian cosmology and religion.... Le Clezio prospects the long textual tradition, ranging from the early soldier-chronicler, Bernal Diaz, to his fellow Frenchman, Antonin Artaud, in order to chart the rich territories of 'Mesoamerican classicism.' - New York Times Book Review """We are lucky to have in Le Clezio a writer of great quality who brings his particular sensibility and talent here to remind us of the very nature of the rituals and myths of the civilizations of ancient Mexico; he provides us with descriptions as precise as they are mysterious."" - Le Figaro ""Le Clezio is an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."" - from the Nobel Prize citation ""A compelling overview of Amerindian cosmology and religion.... Le Clezio prospects the long textual tradition, ranging from the early soldier-chronicler, Bernal Diaz, to his fellow Frenchman, Antonin Artaud, in order to chart the rich territories of 'Mesoamerican classicism.'"" - New York Times Book Review""" French avant-garde novelist Le Clezio (The Giants, 1975, etc.) offers up a meditation and lamentation on Mesoamerican civilizations and the Spanish conquest. Le Clezio starts by summarizing two key documents on the fall of the Aztecs: The True Story of the Conquest of Mexico, by conquistador Bernal Diaz, and History of Ancient Mexico, by Catholic missionary Bernardino de Sahagun. Diaz's text reveals a clash of dreams, the Spanish dream of gold vs. the Mayan dream of bearded men in armor sent by Quetzalcoatl. The History, composed after Cortes and his tiny band had crushed the vast Mexican empire, presents the shared dream of its Christian author and the surviving Indians whom he interviewed: that this lost civilization be recovered or at least memorialized. Other dreams follow, such as those of the shamanistic barbarian (i.e., non-Aztec) Indian nations, who fiercely resisted the influx of Christianity. Four hundred years later, tormented French poet Antonin Artaud arrived in Mexico, chasing his own dream of a world reborn. Le Clezio superbly presents the Aztec worldview with its dancing, bloody sacrifices, hallucinations, dreams. In a statement typically hyperbolic, he counts the destruction of this world of mystical cruelty by modern weapons and rational thought as the greatest disaster in human history. The author concludes by suggesting that the Aztec world, if it had survived, might have integrated dream and ecstasy into daily life. Heated, hypnotic, bizarre: Mesoamerican history as if composed by an Aztec priest. (Kirkus Reviews) Author InformationJ. M. G. Le Clezio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in Nice in 1940. In 1963 he received the Renaudot Prize for his first novel, Le proces-verbal. He has studied the American Indian civilizations of pre-Columbian Mexico since 1971 and has published translations of Mayan sacred texts and an evocation of three sacred villages in the land of the Maya, Trois villes saintes. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |