Quetzalcóatl

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Mariana C. Zinni

This exciting new book is the first comprehensive study on mimesis in the work of fray Bernardino de Sahagun. The volume deals with three concepts that cannot be avoided when thinking about the discursive colonization that took place in New Spain: mimesis (and its correlate, mimicry), hermeneusis and narration, and their relationship with a monological and monolithic Christian narrative coming from Europe. This narrative started to tremble because of the heterogeneity of the non-European discourses confronting the Occidental rationality that was arriving with the conquistadors and friars. The author suggests the presence of a narrative pact crystallized in the use of Nahua metaphors with Christian content and of discursive models that don't belong to European rhetoric, i.e., the huehuetlatolli, an ancient form of exhortation and courtly speech, among other rhetorical devices. The primary objective of these textual practices was to reshape the symbolic world of the Nahuas from the inside. But this rhetorical operation would also contaminate Hispanic discourses. This study proposes a reading guided by the concept of "discursive colonization" -paying special attention to the different levels of imagination and narration-, and its hermeneutic ambiguities, in order to analyze the dominant symbolic construction of European modernity, now deeply imbricated with processes of conquest and evangelization.--Publisher.

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Molly H. Bassett

"Following their first contact in 1519, accounts of Aztecs identifying Spaniards as gods proliferated. But what exactly did the Aztecs mean by a 'god' (teotl), and how could human beings become gods or take on godlike properties? This sophisticated, interdisciplinary study analyzes three concepts that are foundational to Aztec religion--teotl (god), teixiptla (localized embodiment of a god), and tlaquimilolli (sacred bundles containing precious objects)--to shed new light on the Aztec understanding of how spiritual beings take on form and agency in the material world. In The fate of earthly things, Molly Bassett draws on ethnographic fieldwork, linguistic analyses, visual culture, and ritual studies to explore what ritual practices such as human sacrifice and the manufacture of deity embodiments (including humans who became gods), material effigies, and sacred bundles meant to the Aztecs. She analyzes the Aztec belief that wearing the flayed skin of a sacrificial victim during a sacred rite could transform a priest into an embodiment of a god or goddess, as well as how figurines and sacred bundles could become localized embodiments of gods. Without arguing for unbroken continuity between the Aztecs and modern speakers of Nahuatl, Bassett also describes contemporary rituals in which indigenous Mexicans who preserve costumbres (traditions) incorporate totiotzin (gods) made from paper into their daily lives. This research allows us to understand a religious imagination that found life in death and believed that deity embodiments became animate through the ritual binding of blood, skin, and bone"--

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A. W. Tozer

A masterly study of the inner life by a heart thirsting after God. Here is a book for every child of God, pastor, missionary, and Christian. It deals with the deep things of God and the riches of His grace.

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Stuart Peterfreund

"Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin discusses important changes that took place in the argument from design, the staple rhetorical formation of natural theology, during the period from Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to Charles Darwin (1809-82). After a discussion of the circumstances under which Bacon came to be the first to use the term natural theology in English, the book shows that the object of design undergoes a shift. For Bacon, the object of design is the creature. For Robert Boyle and those following his lead, the object of design is the mechanism. For Isaac Newton and those following him, the object of design is the nested system. For William Paley and the writers of the Bridgewater Treatises, the object of design is the system more generally. And for Darwin, the object of design is interactive systems"--