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Chapter Four _'__'. "-,1,. Celestina as an Antithesis of the Blessed -Mother First published anonymously, Celestina was a controversial work from the very beginning.1 In the preliminary letter to an unnamed friend, Rojas says that he found the equally anonymous first act, which some attributed to Juan de Mena and others to Rodrigo Cota, already written, and that he decided to continue it during a two-week vacation (69-70). In the prologue, Rojas points out that his readers quarreled with each other about the quality of the work: "esta presente obra ha seydo instrumento de lid 0 contienda a sus lectores para ponerlos en differencias, dando cada uno sentencia sobre ella a sabor de su voluntad. Unos dezian que era prolixa, otros breve, otros agradable~ otros escura" ("this present work has been the cause of conflicts and disputes among its readers, for it has led them to disagreements, and each one has passed judgment as he pleased. Some said that it was longwinded , others too short; some found it enjoyable, others unclear"; 80). Rojas also points out that people argued about the meaning of Celestina, and alerts readers to the fact that it can be interpreted in different ways: "l.quien neganl que aya contienda en cosa que de tantas maneras se entienda?" ("who will deny that disputes will arise about something that can be understood in so many different ways?"; 81). After indicating that the printers insisted on adding summaries of their own at the beginning of each act, even though he himself did not agree,2 Rojas goes on to tell us that some people argued that Celestina ought to be called a tragedy rather than a comedy, since it ended with sadness, and that this had caused him to compromise , classifying it as a tragicomedy instead. Then he reveals that many readers insisted that he should expand the section that dwelt on "el proceso de su deleyte destos amantes" ("the progress of the pleasure of these two lovers"; 81), and that he decided to oblige them even though it was against his will, thus increasing the original comedy of sixteen acts to the present tragicomedy, with twenty-one. These early controversies continue unabated. Scholars are still arguing whether Rojas really found the first act already written, or whether this was a mere literary ruse on his part.3 If we suppose that two writers were indeed 101 Chapter Four involved and take both into account,4 the problems of interpretation become even more intricate, but, as Ciriaco Moron Arroyo pointed out, it is best to regard the first act as belonging to Rojas and to consider the work as a whole, ,since, after all, he appropriated it (1984, 42). The question of genre now focuses especially on whether Celestina, given its length and factors that are not relevant to the present discussion, ought to be classified as a play or as a novel.s But what has caused rivers of ink to run is the question regarding the author's intentions and the message of his work.6 The ensuing interpretations can be broadly divided into two groups. According to some scholars, Celestina's corrosive view of contemporary society, a rationalist perspective that replaces Divine Providence with a chain of cause and effect, and its radical pessimism reflect Rojas's situation as a semioutsider. Only a converso, they argue, could have written such a work. Other scholars maintain that Celestina is indeed a Christian, didactic work penned as a warning against lust and deceit, as the author proclaims it to be.? The controversy rages on. In the words of Joseph T. Snow, "after almost five centuries of textual life, and after one hundred years of critical commentary on the Tragicomedia, we still have no consensus as to its meaning" (1995, 256). Since few if any literary works have provoked as many fundamentally, diametrically opposed interpretations, it is difficult to imagine that the author did not deliberately set out to create an ambiguous work.8 His awareness of the controversial nature of what he had written can be seen clearly in the prologue, and then he goes on to take unusual precautions in the apparently pious preliminary and postliminary verses, which were absent from the first, anonymous edition, thus supplementing the lengthy incipit, where he had already claimed that Celestina was written "en reprehension de los locos enamorados" ("as a reprimand to unchaste lovers"; 82). Despite this apparently clear, straightforward purpose, Rojas still finds it...

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