Holy Wednesday
A Nahua Drama from Early Colonial Mexico

Louise M. Burkhart

328 pages | 26 illus.
Paper 1996 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1576-2 | $26.50s | £17.50 | Add to shopping cart
A volume in the New Cultural Studies series

"Writing in a careful yet engaging style, Burkhart succeeds not only in clarifying the historical significance of this Nahuatl interpretation of a Spanish play, she also makes it interesting."—The Americas

Identified only in 1986, the Nahuatl Holy Week play is the earliest known dramatic script in any Native American language. In Holy Wednesday, Louise Burkhart presents side-by-side English translations of the Nahuatl play and its Spanish source. An accompanying commentary analyzes the differences between the two versions to reveal how the native author altered the Spanish text to fit his own aesthetic sensibility and the broader discursive universe of the Nahua church. A richly detailed introduction places both works and their creators within the cultural and political contexts of late sixteenth-century Mexico and Spain.

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