Legend of the suns: reproducing the production of a nahuatl text

Resumen

This essay treats the Nahuatl text entitled "Legend of the Suns" in order to examine it for signs of the speech event in which it originated. Because of the importance of this text as one of our most-complete native accounts of Nahua cosmology and history, previous translations and interpretations have rightly viewed it as a fountain of preconquest "Aztec" thought. This selective analysis and translation focuses instead on what the "Sun Legend" can tell us about postconquest interactions between Spanish and Nahuas and their joint, complicated, and often inadvertent production of both history and texts.