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Chapter Eight Rojas, Delicado, and the Art of Subversion Delicado's claim,on the very frontispiece of his book, that it contains "munchas mas cosas que la Celestina" ("many more things than Celestina"; 165), may have been an advertising gimmick, for Celestina was an extremely popular, bawdy work with the name of another woman on the title, but it is also a challenge, for La Lozana andaluza does indeed have much in common with Celestina. The two works are the most important precedents of the picaresque novel, and, although La Lozana andaluza was influenced by avariety of previous works and genres, its indebtedness to Celestina in both literary and ideological terms is much greater. As a converso, Delicado was able to understand Celestina in ways that most other readers could not, coinciding with and even at times exceeding Rojas in his covert criticism of Christian dogma. According to Menendez y Pelayo, Delicado's work is sui generis, a "libro . inmundo y feo" ("filthy and ugly book"; 1961, 54) without any literary precedents (57), but the boat on the frontispiece immediately brings to mind the literature of folly that became extremely popular throughout Europe thanks to Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (1494) and Erasmus's The Praise ofFolly (1509),1 a genre whose main manifestation in Spain is Cervantes's immortal Don Quixote (1605; 1615).2 The tradition of the court jester of the fifteenth century must also be taken into account (Marquez Villanueva 1979; 1982; 1985-86). Under the cover of madness, writers were able to deal more freely with certain religious and social subjects, since, after all, fools were not responsible for what they said. As we have seen, Delicado's characters avail themselves frequently of this type of discourse. Significantly, the ship of fools found at the beginning (165) is matched by the "arbor de la locura" ("tree of folly"; 479), which, in the very last mamotreto, figures in a dream where Lozana also sees Mars, god of war, and how she and Rampin will eventually end up in Venice. Right after, in the first of the appendices, the narrator mentions the tree of folly again, informing his readers that, unlike many others, he was unable to pick 231 Chapter Eight any leaves or branches from it because of his short stature (485). Thus, in a way, La Lozana andaluza is framed in the idea of folly. Notwithstanding Menendez y Pelayo's peremptory denial, Delicado uses several other literary sources. The second engraving testifies to the influence of Apuleius's Golden Ass, also known as Metamorphosis, which was very popular during the Middle Ages and the sixteenth century. In the Golden Ass, the narrator, a young man named Lucius Apuleius, who is identified with the author, is turned into an ass, has a series of adventures, including some bawdy ones, and regains his human form thanks to the intervention of Isis. The engraving in question, which, significantly, appears on the reverse of the title page, is presented as the second of a diptych, for the top portrays Lozana in a room, surrounded by various courtesans, while Rampin appears sitting in both corners. The bottom of this engraving is what brings to mind Apuleius's book, for it depicts a man standing next to an ass loaded with luggage, saying farewell to three women who look at him from two windows .3 The man, then, is about to undertake a journey, and this echoes the voyage represented by the boat in the frontispiece. Just in itself, this second engraving does not prove that Delicado had the Golden Ass in mind, but, right after, in the prologue, while explaining his reasons for writing his book, Delicado states mischievously that "los santos hombres por mas saber, y otras veces por desenojarse, leian libros fabulosos y cogian entre las flores las mejores" ("holy men, at times to increase their knowledge and others to amuse themselves, read books of fiction and picked the best among the flowers"; 170).4As Hernandez Ortiz demonstrated (1974, 46), these words are inspired in Diego Lopez de Cortegana's introduction to his late-fifteenth-century translation of Apuleius: "pues que los santos doctores por mas saber, e otras vezes por desenojarse, leyan libros de gentiles e los tenian por famillares" ("for the holy fathers, to increase their knowledge and at times to amuse themselves, read pagan books and were familiar with them"; 1915,2). There are additional reasons to believe that Delicado had Apuleius in mind. At...

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