The Textual History and Authorship of 'Celestina' (review)

Keith Whinnom's proposed, but never completed, short book on Celestina has now reached his reading public over 40 years after it was conceived and begun. Alan Deyermond published two posthumous articles by Whinnom which would have been in Part II of the work (on Rojas's sources), and now Jeremy Lawrance corrects and updates Part I, on the textual tradition of both the Comedia and the Tragicomedia. Lawrance hides his considerable contribution under the proverbial bushel, not only because he hides within his footnotes his rationale for abridging parts of the Whinnom text now seen as superfluous or outdated, but also because he painstakingly updates the list of interpolations and suppressions in the Tragicomedia text with reference to more recent critical editions and facsimiles or originals of the early editions. He also defends the textual integrity of Zaragoza 1507, which now boasts a complete version that is considerably better than the text seen by Whinnom and used by me for my second foray into Celestina editing.

Whinnom, somewhat surprisingly to me at least, seems to uphold and vindicate the findings of Stephen Gilman in The Art of 'La Celestina'.

For some reason, British Hispanists take Gilman to task for not making clear avant la lettre that he believed what Rojas had said, namely that he found the first act, and was responsible for the continuation, including the additional acts and interpolations of the remainder of the work. However Gilman does in fact reach this conclusion, the icing on the cake being the Mollegas el ortelano, whose orchard features in an interpolated reminiscence by Sempronio in Act XII as well as in Rojas's last will and testament. I could not find a reference to this in Whinnom, who also feels that Gilman's enthusiastic pronouncement that Rojas must have written the Tragicomedia argumentos is unproven. Gilman's assertion that Rojas may have extensively rewritten Act I also goes unglossed. However numerous erroneous opinions of other critics, from Herriott to Lida de Malkiel to Menéndez Pelayo to Cejador y Frauca, are challenged and demolished. In particular, Whinnom cannot find enough proof to agree with Lida's assertion that the additional acts may have been written by several hands, not just by Rojas alone. However many critics still find the Tratado de Centurio somewhat inferior to the superlative new acts 16 and 19, among the best in the work. And the authorship controversy still rages on, numerous reputable critics still wondering if Rojas was a total charlatan, with the most recent claims being made about an Italian-language manuscript which is said to predate the known Spanish printings.

Of course Whinnom died shortly before the Act I fragment emerged from the bowels of the Real Biblioteca de Palacio, and it would have been fascinating to have known what would have been made of this by Whinnom and Gilman, both deceased in 1986. An unhappy year for Celestina studies, and although this small volume cannot compensate, it is however a valuable addition to our corpus of work by Keith Whinnom, thanks to the diligence of Jeremy Lawrance and the late, lamented Alan Deyermond.