Aztec Religion and Art of Writing

Dr. Isabel Laack, Privatdozentin at the Institute for the Study of Religion, Heidelberg University, Germany, is the author of Religion und Musik in Glastonbury (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011) as well as numerous articles in the field of the aesthetics of religion.

Contents



Foreword

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations



Introduction

 1 Introducing the Subject

 2 Indicating Sociopolitical Relevance

 3 Realizing the Aesthetics of Religion

 4 Outlining the Chapters

1 Methodology

 1 Doing Research in a Postcolonial World

 2 Writing History

 3 Clarifying Perspectives and Objectives

 4 Summary

2 Living in Cultural Diversity

 1 Drawing on History

 2 Living in the Central Highlands

 3 Living in Religious Diversity

 4 Conclusion: Diversity within the Nahua Tradition

3 Living in Relation: Being Human in Tenochtitlan

 1 How the World Came to Be

 2 How the Human World Came to Be

 3 How the Cosmic Dynamics Unfold

 4 Living in Cosmic Relations

 5 Living in Social Relations

 6 Living Properly—Living in Balance

4 A World in Motion: Nahua Ontology

 1 Aztec Notions of “Divinity”

 2 The Nature of Teotl

 3 Teotl’s Realization: Nahualli and the Layers of Reality

 4 A World in Motion: The Fifth Era

 5 The Problem of Ephemerality: What Is Really Real?

5 Understanding a World in Motion: Nahua Epistemology

 1 Epistemology

 2 Knowledge Experts: Wise (Wo)Men and Scribes

 2 People with Special Insights

 3 The Inspiration of Knowledge and Its Expression

6 Interacting with a World in Motion: Nahua Pragmatism and Aesthetics

 1 Human Agency: Seeking Balance

 2 Human Duties

 3 Interacting with Rituals

 4 Involving the Senses and Aesthetic Media

 5 The Concept of the Teixiptla

7 Expressing Reality in Language: Nahua Linguistic Theory

 1 Nahua Oral Tradition

 2 Reconstructing Nahua Songs

 3 Thinking in Nahuatl

 4 Nahua Imagery

 5 The Relationship between the Spoken Sign and Reality in Nahuatl

 6 Nahua Imagery and the Problem of Rationality

8 Materializing Reality in Writing: Nahua Pictography

 1 The History of Writing Systems in Mesoamerica

 2 The Writing System of the Nahuas

 3 Social Text Practice

 4 Books and Authors

 5 Nahua Culture between Orality and Literacy

9 Understanding Pictography: Interpreting Nahua Semiotics

 1 The History of Evaluating Aztec Writing

 2 Different Kinds of Meaning and Knowledge

 3 Seeing Reality: Nahua Semiotic Theory

 4 Interpreting Nahua Pictography

10 Interpretative Results: Nahua Religion, Scripture, and Sense of Reality

 1 From Religion to Being-in-the-World

 2 From Scripture to Semiotics

 3 Interrelationships: Semiotic Theory and Embodied Meaning

Conclusion



References

Index

Plates