Aztec Culture
Aztec Culture
Aztec Culture
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
University of California Press and International Society for the History of Rhetoric are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Rhetorica: A Journal of the
History of Rhetoric
' Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaha, ed. Angel Maria Garibay K., 4 vols.
(Mexico City: Porrua, 1956), 2:53.
251
'"Prologo," Libro Sexto, Historia general (1956), p. 53. The Florentine Codex does
not include this prologue. However, the Spanish edition quoted here also uses mate-
rial from the other manuscripts, the "Madrid Codices" of the Biblioteca del Palacio
and the Academia de la Historia, Madrid.
'Juan Bautista, HuehuetlahtolU (Mexico City, ca. 1600), rpt. in Vol. 3 of Coleccion
de documentos para la historia Mexicana, ed. Antonio Pefiafiel (Mexico City: Secretaria
de Fometo, 1901), and Horacio Carochi, Arte de la lengua Mexicana con la declaracion de
los adverbos della (Mexico City, 1645), rpt. in Coleccion de grammaticas de la lengua Mexi-
cana (Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Mexico, 1904), 1:395-536.
'For other accounts of the huehuetlahtolU see, for example, Juan de Torque-
mada, Monarquia Indiana (Seville, 1615; Madrid, 1723), ed. Miguel Leon Portilla
(Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1969), 2:492-99 and Alonso de Zurita, Brief and Sum-
mary Rehtion of the Lords of New Spain (Breve y summaria relacion de los sefiores de la
Nueva Espaha) [ca. 1570], trans, and ed. Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Rutgers University Press, 1963) pp. 97-102 and 140-51.
'"The Rhetorical Orations," pp. 85-107.
'""The Research Methods of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun: The Question-
naires," Sixteenth-Century Mexico, p. 133.
"The most obvious feature of the huehuetlahtolU, that they are, quite simply,
speeches, is often overlooked by historians in search of other ethnographic data.
Even when the huehuetlahtolU are considered as literature their oratorical origin is
often obscured. A notable exception to such approaches is Sullivan, "The Rhetorical
Orations," who does consider these discourses as oratory.
"(Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1958), 2:273.
'^Communication and Culture in Ancient India and China (Syracuse: Syracuse Uni-
versity Press, 1971). Chapter 9, "The Rhetoric of Behavior: Ceremony, Etiquette, and
Methodology," pp. 145-60. Although Oliver is not, of course, discussing Aztec cul-
ture, the parallels between his subject and the huehuetlahtolU are striking: "Rhetoric
in Chinese Society thus came to be very much akin to sheer propriety. The utility
which rhetoric was to serve was the maintenance of harmony. The way to this goal
was through ceremony, etiquette, and methodology. There was a right way of doing
things—a way that was established and accepted. When behavior conformed to this
pattern of expectation, the individual's relations with his fellows would be predict-
able and dependable. Accordingly, the community would have a decent and deco-
rous stability" (p. 145).
II
"For the importance of the epideictic genre in the Renaissance see O. B. Hardi-
son, Jr., The Enduring Monument: A Study of the Idea of Praise in Renaissance Lit-
erary Theory and Practice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1962)
and Brian Vickers, "Epideictic and Epic in the Renaissance," New Literary History 14
(1982): 497-537.
"Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome (Durham, North Carolina: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 1979), p. 39.
"The New Rhetoric, trans. John WUkenson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, In-
diana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), p. 51.
"Sullivan, p. 109.
^"Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London and New York:
Methuen, 1982), pp. 31-77.
Ill
" Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern
Times (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 8-9.