The Significance and Context of La Celestina

Significance of La Celestina in Spanish Literature

La Celestina is considered a masterpiece of the fifteenth century and one of the most outstanding works in Spanish literature, even in universal literature. Menéndez Pelayo, a scholar of the work, stated that in the absence of Don Quixote, La Celestina would occupy first place among the imaginative books composed in Spain. Celestina's character also belongs to the gallery of universal characters of Spanish literature, along with Don Quixote, Sancho, and Don Juan.

Historical, Social, and Cultural Context

La Celestina appeared during the transition period from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, which marked the beginning of a brilliant stage in Spanish history and culture.

Culturally, the era of the Catholic Monarchs was an important step towards the new Renaissance forms, in conflict with the medieval forms that were emerging throughout the fifteenth century and reached their highest affirmation in the reign of Charles I.

It was a consolidation phase of humanism. This is a cultural, intellectual, and political movement that attaches great importance to the texts of Greco-Roman antiquity for the formation of the individual. It is indispensable to the study of humanities and everything that relates to freedom and dignity. The interest in the human becomes key. This movement appeared in Italy in the fourteenth century and became widespread in the fifteenth century throughout Europe. The first great humanist was Petrarch, who, along with Dante and Boccaccio, were the "three crowns" of the fourteenth century Italian.

In Spain, humanism elicited a desire to ennoble the vulgar language with Latin phrases, even tracing the syntactic order to give a more religious tone to writings. This trend can be seen in Fernando de Rojas's Latinized style.

A new conception of life began, different from the medieval one, in which man is the center and measure of all things. This arose because of anthropocentrism, or faith in man himself. This vision is manifested in La Celestina.

La Celestina is the most successful work of this period, in which there are romances, such as Prison Love, a genre that reached its peak and which also produced the literature of chivalry, with Amadis of Gaul as the prototype of the lover and example of the brave.