The late medieval masterpiece Celestina has long been the focus
of controversy, over both its authorship and the apparent
contradictions and inconsistencies within its plot. Scholars trace
the publication of Celestina to 1499, when Fernando de Rojas
supposedly discovered the first act and completed the remainder of
the drama within a two-week period. The plot centers on the
ill-fated love of Calisto and Melibea and the fascinating character
of the old bawd, Celestina. Scholars disagree about how to
interpret the meeting of the two lovers in the first scene, when
they share an unusual conversation that is incongruous with their
comportment in the remainder of the work. Ricardo Castells seeks to
resolve this and other seeming contradictions by tracing the
oneiric, phantasmal, and melancholic traditions of the Renaissance
and their effect on the composition of Celestina. Castells explores
the European cultural and literary tradition--works of both fiction
and nonfiction that would have been available to Rojas--to discover
theoretical approaches to the physiology of lovesickness and its
accompanying dreams and visions. He employs the themes of love,
medicine, and dreams in these works to explain the seemingly
illogical progression of the play's action and the ultimately
detrimental effects of melancholy, lovesickness, and sensual
contamination on the protagonist, Calisto. In so doing, Castells
places Celestina within its appropriate cultural and historical
context, enriching our perception not only of the text itself but
also of the traditions that helped to produce it.
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