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Tlamachiliztlahtolçaçanilli: A Performance Translation Of The Náhuatl "Wisdom-Discourse Fables" From The Manuscript Of 1558, Willard Gingerich

Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The 10 page Náhuatl manuscript included at the end of the so-called Codice Chimalpopoca and commonly referred to since 1903 as Leyenda de los soles, “Legend of the Suns,” or the “Manuscript of 1558,” is a fundamental witness to indigenous Nahua- Mexica memories of their own cosmogony and earliest history as they recalled these things some twenty-five-plus years into the colonial era. As supplement to the later Anales de Cuauhtitlan manuscript (ca. 1570-73) which accompanies it in the Chimalpopoca, the 1558 manuscript provides a privileged view of Nahua-Aztec genesis myths, from a Mexica informant. The narrative frame of this retelling …