Works-in-Progress Session: Xoquiiac Eoatoc in Eztli / The Rising Stench of Blood: Blood Sacrifice and the Senses in Historia general and Historia verdadera

–presented by Rebecca Smith, Doctoral Student, University of California, Los Angeles

Hosted by the Early Modern Research Group

Online event via Zoom
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Using Book 12 of Bernardino de Sahagún’s Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España written around 1555 in Nahuatl and Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España completed around 1568 in Spanish as its central objects of analysis, this study investigates the way 16th-century chroniclers–from both Mexica and Spanish traditions–invoke seemingly identical olfactory associations with bloodshed as they recount their sides of the Spanish-Mexica War (1519-1521). Rebecca Smith argues these similarities stem from what appear to be surprising compatibilities in religious belief in and olfactory interpretations of blood sacrifice since both cultures associate it with the sweet-smelling purification of transgression, transgression that without such cleansing, would smell foul. However, Smith ultimately concludes that ambiguity in the Nahuatl vocabulary of the senses calls into question the olfactory similarities in the chronicles, opening up the possibility that they may be a case of what James Lockhart calls Double Mistaken Identity.

Rebecca Smith is a fourth-year doctoral student in the department of Comparative Literature where she studies early modern Spanish and Nahuatl texts. Additionally, Smith is involved in translation, urban humanities, and experimental sound projects at UCLA.

Smith is pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Early Modern Studies, administered by the Center for 17^th– & 18^th-Century Studies. Her study is supported by the program’s Summer Mentorship award, and her faculty mentor is Professor Barbara Fuchs.

Image: Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, “Book 12: The Conquest of Mexico”, fol. 1r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/12/folio/1r?spTexts=&nhTexts=