Celestina’s Characters and 15th Century Spanish Poetry
Celestina’s characters have a strong realistic character. There is nothing idealized in them since they have both flaws and virtues. Diverse characters belong to different social classes: on the one hand, the refined world of Melibea and Calisto, and on the other, the base and ignoble world of Celestina, the servants, and prostitutes.
Celestina has the best character design. She is an old, amoral, cunning, and greedy woman who lives off her delusions and the benefits they bring. She is like the magpie in the previous book, Trotaconventos, a good ‘amos’. She appears as a complex character who owns a broad rhetoric and lore that has obtained the privilege of being the first in his class that becomes the protagonist of a work of this significance.
Wealthy young Calisto loves Melibea, but his only intention is to seduce her, hence the resort to a bawd. His death occurs randomly, and there is no nobility of love or romance. He represents, by contrast, an example of crazy love, trying to censor whose attitude in the work.
Melibea is the young protagonist. She initially rejects Calisto, and when she falls in love, he will be the reason for her life. To protect the family’s honor, she must love in secret. When delivered to Calisto, she hypocritically laments the dishonor that has cast upon herself and upon his family.
Parmeno and Sempronius are the servants, reflecting the end of medieval serfdom: they do not seek the good of his master but his own benefit and are loyal only to money. So, they do not hesitate to kill the matchmaker.
The Lyrical Worship
During the 15th century, the nobility attached itself to the arts and letters, and court poetry was born. It draws primarily on courtly love: the poet-lover is devoted entirely to a lady without doing anything about it; this situation is called vassalage of love.- The beloved is of a higher class and unreachable.
- The beloved is not for the lover and raises the topic of the beloved-enemy.
- The woman’s name is concealed to avoid libel.
- The greatest evil of the lover is the pain of not seeing their loved one.
- Love is waived and only ceases with death.
The Songbooks
Learned poetry is included in songbooks, collections of poems, usually by various authors. The most important are the Cancionero de Baena (600+ works) and the Cancionero de Estúñiga. They learned poetry and collected abundant samples of traditional lyric, or reworking by anonymous authors educated in the style of popular lyrics.Jorge Manrique
He joined a passion for arms and letters, a model of life that begins in the fifteenth century and which is customary in the sixteenth.Work
Very few compositions of JM retain. Those that have survived are classified as:- Poetry of Love: In spite of following the troubadour style, they have great simplicity in language.
- Moral Poetry: It places the main lyrical work of this century, and which from its reputation JM Verses on the death of his father. Coplas
Structure and Content
They are inserted into a rich literary tradition in the Middle Ages focuses on the theme of death. The work consists of 40 songs, organized into 3 parts:- Verses 1-13: general comment on the transience of life and death value. The central topic of this part is the world’s contempt. He tries to convince the reader of the insignificance of earthly goods. Nothing in this part of the work is away from the religious world.
- Verses 14-24: Illustrate the above. It uses the topic of the ubi sunt? Appeal based on the rhetorical question.
- Verses 25-40: The poet’s father appears, who was extolling their virtues and merits. It presents death as the crowning of a virtuous life and heroic. It arrives with Rodrigo serenidad. Don comes fully to God.
Transcendence
It involves a compilation of all the medieval feel about death, which is coupled to vision itself. Manrique choose a sub-genre of the elegy tradition.Finally, the theme of death was conceived as a way to eternal life is renewed in the presence of fame. This is an element associated with honor and heroism, able to conquer death.