The Celestina: A Fifteenth-Century Spanish Novel in Dialogue (No. Cal 26)

By Fernando de Rojas and De Rojas Fernando

Book Overview

The Celestina is the first European novel, a fifteenth-century Spanish masterpiece remarkable for its originality, depth, handling of dialogue, and drawing of character.

The plot is simple. A young nobleman enlists the services of Celestina, an old bawd, to help him seduce a girl; the seduction ends in tragedy. It is not, however, the love story that is important. It is Celestina who dominates the scene.

She is a frank and lusty old pagan of the Renaissance, brimming over with classical lore and a salty wisdom gained in the course of a vigorous and sinful life, which she still loves with a wonderful heartiness. Her greatest regret, indeed, is that in her remote youth she neglected some few opportunities to enjoy herself. In her old age her pleasure is in purveying pleasures to others. She is one of the great creations of all literature and has a secure place beside her two compatriots, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

This Spanish classic, the greatest of the forebears of Cervantes, was originally published anonymously, in 1499; later editions bear the name of Fernando de Rojas as author, in acrostics.

Readers familiar with Lesley Byrd Simpson's translations of Two Novels of Mexico by Manuel Azuela, The Poem of the Cid, and Little Sermons on Sin: The Archpriest of Talavera will not be surprised that he has preserved the vigor and colloquial flavor of the original.



Notes on the edition, from the translator's preface:



The Burgos edition of 1499 the earliest surviving edition and the one upon which this translation was based] was published anonymously. After 1501 the name of Fernando de Rojas appears in acrostics as the author; but he, or whoever it was, "corrected" the text by interpolating long passages that mercilessly elaborate the obvious, and then, in an apparent attempt to kill the work altogether, he inserted, between the death of Calisto and its discovery by Melibea (who is standing on the other side of the wall from which he falls to his death), five new acts These additions are not without merit, but I am convinced that the original author could hardly have been a party to the violence thus done to the austere structure of his narrative. In short, all the interpolations and additions are impertinent and obtrusive, and I have omitted them and based my translation on the primitive text. The author, or, more likely, the early publishers, slavishly imitating Classic models, thought fit to introduce each act with an "argument," which, besides being dull, strikes me as an unnecessary piece of cluttering and I have omitted it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520011775
• ISBN13: 9780520011779
• Release Date: December 1958
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.3" x 0.5" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

From Falstaff to Figaro and Beyond ...

... all the European literature of 'lovable' old rogues and sly servants owes something to this fundamental classic of Spanish literature. Published in 1499, a century before Don Quixote, half a century before Lazarillo de Tormes, La Celestina has been regarded as "the first European novel." It could just as well be taken as the last Renaissance classical dialogue, however, since its structure owes more to the neo-Platonists and Humanists like Eramus or Pico della Mirandola than to any earlier prose. It's either a novel-in-dialogue or a very long play. The site of its first scene, a private garden in Salamanca, is still revered and maintained as a tourist attraction for Spaniards. "Celestina" is an old bawd, a fat lusty, greedy brothel-keeper, restorer of maidenheads, procurer of virgins, maker of love potions. The two sly servants of the lovesick nobleman, Calisto, have been acquainted with her since their childhoods; they know the best and the worst of her. Melibea, sole daughter of a family of note, is the object of Calisto's infatuation and of Celestina's wiles. The whole affair is rollickingly funny, in the raunchiest vein of Chaucer or Boccaccio, until the cascading tragedy of the conclusion: a murder, an execution, a fatal accident, and a suicide all in the last few pages. As you'd expect in a Renaissance dialogue, there are extended philosophical discourses, some astringently ironic, some sincerely worldly-wise. Leslie Byrd Simpson has given us quite a readable, enjoyable translation into modern but not slangy English. If you can't read Spanish at all, this is the little edition to get; if you have some Spanish and choose to struggle, I'd recommend one of the bi-lingual editions, and if your Spanish is good, well, chances are you've already encountered La Celestina. Spanish in 1499 retained a lot of the flexibility of word order of its Latin roots; you'll find verbs at the ends of sentences and other such inversions, but the vocabulary and inflections are closer to modern Spanish than 15th C English is to modern American. In any format, in any language, it's a book you ought to know, and it's only a fraction of the length of Don Quixote!

Excellent work.

The book is EXCELLENT by Catedra which analyzes the 'obra' in detail. Excellent book and great story by Rojas and his crtizers.

A forgotten and ignored classic

Celestina is amusing, ironic, and while the prose and dialogue is long and descriptive, it is never boring- I really enjoyed this play.

A forgotten and ignored classic

Celestina is amusing, ironic, and while the prose and dialogue is long and descriptive, it is never boring- I really enjoyed this play. A note to the person who claims to be the author: Celestina was written in 1499, and it is widely assumed the author lived circa the same time. So, congratultions on your 500th birthday. :)

It captures the essance of good and evil in love.

Fernando De Rojas captures the truth of the love between man and woman in a time when novels were rarely written. This book plays out of a drama that inhabits the first concepts of the tragedy of love. It is what books like Romeo and Juliet are compared to.