This dissertation explores the literary representation of sacrificial rituals in historical texts that deal with the conquest and colonization of Mexico during the sixteenth century. It addresses the works of three key historians of the Early Colonial Period including the Spanish Crown's official historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, the Franciscan priest Toribio de Benavente Motolinia and the Indian historian Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc. The works of these authors are part of the foundational interpretations of human sacrifice in the New World. Conversely, such interpretations played a key role in constructing and reshaping the European historiographical field by articulating various ideological and aesthetic values of the Aztec rituals.;In my work, I examine the diverse and often contradictory images of human sacrifice as mediated by three important controversies which occurred during the Early Colonial Period and include the purpose of the historical discipline, the knowledge of Indian rituals as a means to evangelization, and the textual authority of the Indian historian. The dissertation demonstrates how these different accounts, which describe the Aztec sacrificial rites, contributed to the emergence of a separate and unique Spanish-American historiographical field. Moreover, I argue that representations of the marvelous, the new, and the spectacular as depicted in textual constructions of sacrifice significantly contributed to articulate the poetic dimension of the histories of the New World. Above all, I argue that the new philosophical and methodological inquiries brought about by these representations ultimately served as a means to redefine the historical discipline.
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