Cantares Mexicanos

The "Cantares Mexicanos" is the name given to a manuscript collection of Nahuatl songs or poems recorded in the 16th century. The 91 songs of the "Cantares" form the largest Nahuatl song collection, containg over half of all known traditional Nahuatl songs. It is currently located in the National Library of Mexico in Mexico City.

A Spanish edition and translation of the manuscript was given by the great Mexican scholar, Ángel María Garibay Kintana, in the second and third volumes of his "Poesía náhuatl" (1965, 1968). Later, a complete transcription and English translation of the "Cantares" was published in 1985 by John Bierhorst as "Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs", [ISBN 0-8047-1182-8.] as well as a dictionary and concordance. [ISBN 0-8047-1183-6] Although Bierhorst's transcription was appreciated by scholars for its accuracy and faithfulness to the original manuscript, his translations were criticized as misleading and colored by his view that the "Cantares" are "ghost songs", part of a colonial revitalization movement parallel to the ghost dances of the Plains Indians. [Dakin (1986): pp. 1014–1016; Karttunen (1987): pp. 442–443; León-Portilla (1992): pp. 41–44; Lockhart (1991): pp. 141–157.]

Notes

References

*cite book |author=Bierhorst, John |year=1985 |title=Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs |location=Stanford |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=0-8047-1182-8 |oclc=11185910
*cite book |author=Bierhorst, John |year=1985 |title=A Nahuatl-English Dictionary and Concordance to the Cantares Mexicanos: With an Analytical Transcriptions and Grammatical Notes |location=Stanford |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=0-8047-1183-6 |oclc=11185890
* |year=2005 |title= Ancient American Poets: [http://red-coral.net/Hungry.html: The Flower Songs of Nezahualcoyotl] |location= Tempe |publisher= Bilingual Press |isbn=1-931010-21-8 |oclc=226071756
*cite journal |author=Dakin, Karen |year=1986 |title=Review of "Cantares mexicanos" and "A Nahuatl-English dictionary and concordance to the Cantares mexicanos" |journal=American Anthropologist |volume=88 |issue=4 |pages=pp. 1014–1016 |doi=10.1525/aa.1986.88.4.02a00710
*cite book |author=Garibay, A.M. |year=1965 |title=Poesía náhuatl II |location=Mexico|publisher=UNAM
*cite book |author=Garibay, A.M. |year=1968 |title=Poesía náhuatl III |location=Mexico|publisher=UNAM
*cite journal |author=Karttunen, Frances |year=1987 |title=Review of "Cantares mexicanos" and "A Nahuatl-English dictionary and concordance to the Cantares mexicanos" |journal=Language |volume=63 |issue=2 |pages=pp. 442–443 |doi=10.2307/415694
*cite book |author=León-Portilla, Miguel |year=1992 |title=Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World |location=Norman |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-2441-5 |oclc=243733946
*cite book |author=Lockhart, James |year=1991 |chapter=Care, Ingenuity, and Irresponsibility: The Bierhorst Edition of the "Cantares Mexicanos" |pages=pp. 141–157 |title=Nahuas and Spaniards: Postconquest Central Mexican History and Philology |location=Stanford |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=0-8047-1954-3

ee also

*Romances de los señores de Nueva España