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310ReviewsLa corónica 34.2, 2006 Celestina: ,An annotated edition ofthe first Dutch translation (Antwerp, 1550). Eds. Lieve Beh¡eis ?? Kathleen V Kish. Avisos de Flandes, Fuentes 1. Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain. 2005. 411 pp. ISBN 90-5867423 -1 Since the nineteenth centun; but especially in the twentieth, scholars and students of Hispanic letters have largely built a consensus that, after the unchallenged supremacy of Don Quijote, the second great classic of the language is the Comedia/Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea. Known most commonly for the past four centuries as Celestina, this singular work was hailed in congresses around the world on the occasion of its quincentenary year in 1999, and interest in all and even aspect of it has expanded with time, a proper tribute to a masterjiiece which still guards many of its enigmas tightly. The volume under review closes the circle of a series of modern editions of "first translations" into Eurojie's major vernacular languages during the sixteenth century. The first foreign language Celestina sjioke was -as is well known- Italian.1 In facr, that translation, completed late in 1505, antedates the first extant Spanish edition ofthe Tragicomedia, Jorge Coci's 1507 Zaragoza printing, and demonstrates clearly that copies of an earlier printing of the twenty-one act version had already reached Italy, although no exemplar has as vet surfaced.'' We also know that Josef ben Samuel Tsarfari, a Jewish physician living in Rome, translated Celestina into Hebrew very shortly after the first Italian translation was made, in about 1507-1508, and introduced it with a 62-line poem. It is the latter alone that survives, the translation having either been lost or destroyed (Dvvavne E. Carpenter). A copy of that earlv Italian translation, most probably one from 1519, was read bv a German student in Italy. Christoph Wirsung. who took it upon himself to make Celestina known to his German-speaking compatriots and in the end produced two translations, one in 1520, the second -with many 1 Kathleen V. Kish produced an edition of this translation in 1074. - .Although FJ. Norton long ago showed convincingly that none ofthe six printings with colophons purporting to be "Sevilla 1502" corresponded to printings earlier than 1508(?), it is disappointing to still find that date being proclaimed for the Tragicomedia. While it is true that these false colophons might have been copied from an original edition of that citv and date, scholars need to be more cautious in making such claims until more solid evidence in fact appeals. La corónica 34.2 (Spring, 2006): 310-14 Reviews311 shifts in emphasis- in 1534.3 Between the dates of his two German versions, an anonymous Frenchman in 1527 performed the same service for his compatriots by providing rhem with the first French translation of Celestina, again most probably based on an Italian translation rather than the Spanish original.4 Next in chronological order is the Dutch translation which is the object of this review, now edited for the first time. Among remaining vernacular translations, the first hill one into English was made at century's end byJames Mabbe, "Don Diego Puede-Ser", although the manuscript copy of 1598 was not widely circulated before a second version reached print in London in 1631. After these vernacular translations, in 1624 we have a Latin version, produced by the prolific German humanist, Caspar von Barth, with an extensive critical apparatus. As of this writing, an edition of Barth's translation is being prepared for publication in 2006.5 And with the Latin edition in print, we will have seen, in a period of approximately four decades, the full cycle of early Celestina translations in reliable modern editions. The Dutch translation of 1550 was made in Antwerp, possibly stimulated by the previous printing in the same city ofthree Spanish editions oíCelestina in 1539, 1544 and 1545. The Dutch translator is anonymous and despite much research the editors cannot trace him, even on the basis of the characteristics ofthe language employed. In fact, the ferment in the printing industry over dialects of Dutch in the mid-sixteenth century was such that copyists and typesetters often customized the language ofa text being typeset...

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