New Philology facts for kids

New Philology is a special way to study history. It focuses on old texts written by Native Americans in their own languages during the time of Spanish rule in Mexico. This method helps historians understand history from the point of view of the indigenous people, like the Nahuas (who were often called Aztecs).

The name "New Philology" was created by a historian named James Lockhart. He and his students started using this approach in the 1970s. It's a bit like being a detective, but instead of clues, they use old writings to piece together what life was like for Native Americans long ago.

How New Philology Started

New Philology builds on older ways of studying texts. The "old" way focused on carefully reading documents and collecting them. A famous Mexican scholar from the 1800s, Joaquín García Icazbalceta, did this kind of work.

The "new" part of New Philology is that it always publishes the original native language texts. It also includes English translations and explanations. This helps everyone understand these important historical documents.

Key Scholars and Their Work

New Philology really grew from the 1970s onwards. It was inspired by earlier historians like Charles Gibson. His book Aztecs under Spanish Rule (1964) was very important. It put the colonial-era Nahuas at the center of historical studies.

James Lockhart was a main leader in this new approach. In the early 1970s, he began learning Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Nahuas. He then studied local documents written in Nahuatl. His most famous book, The Nahuas After the Conquest, came out in 1992. It brought together a lot of this new research.

Two early and important books using this method were Nahuatl in the Middle Years (1976) by Lockhart and Frances Karttunen. Another was Beyond the Codices (1976). This book showed that there were many native language texts beyond just the fancy picture books called codices. Arthur J. O. Anderson, who helped translate the famous Florentine Codex, also worked on these early projects.

Students and New Discoveries

In the mid-1970s, James Lockhart started teaching history students at UCLA. These students learned Nahuatl and began researching local documents.

• Sarah Cline was one of the first. In 1981, she studied 60 old wills from a Nahua town called Culhuacán. She later published a book called The Book of Tributes (1993). It looked at early Nahuatl censuses (population counts) from Cuernavaca.
• Robert Haskett studied Nahuatl texts from colonial Cuernavaca.
• Susan Schroeder explored writings by a 1600s Nahua historian named Chimalpahin.
• Rebecca Horn researched the connections between Nahuas and Spaniards in Coyoacan.

Most of these local documents, like wills and sales records, were written in Nahuatl. This means we have a lot of published Nahuatl texts and studies about them.

Later students of Lockhart, like Matthew Restall and Kevin Terraciano, learned other Native American languages too.

• Matthew Restall studied Yucatec Maya. His book The Maya World (1997) explored Maya culture and society.
• Kevin Terraciano focused on the Mixtec people of Oaxaca. His book The Mixtecs of Colonial Oaxaca (2001) shared their history.

These scholars helped us learn more about different indigenous groups in Mexico.

Beyond Mexico

The ideas of New Philology have even been used to study old European song texts. It helps scholars understand that a book or text is more than just words. Its physical form, who wrote it, who read it, and its history all add to its meaning.

Important Books from New Philology

Many books have been published using the New Philology approach. Here are some key examples: