Spanish Medieval Literature: La Celestina & Book of Good Love
The Social World of La Celestina
In La Celestina, the transformation of medieval society is palpable. This can be seen:
- On the one hand, in the establishment of new relationships between different social strata. The nobility has been displaced by the gentry; it is no longer lineage, inherited from our ancestors, but wealth that determines social status. In addition, the old feelings of respect and mutual fidelity between masters and servants has been replaced by purely economic relationships.
- On the other hand, in the configuration of a new moral code whose guiding principles are: awareness of one’s individuality, the desire for freedom, and a certain pragmatism aimed at finding personal benefit and profit.
Fourteenth Century: The Archpriest of Hita
In the emerging bourgeois, materialist society (civic society) of the fourteenth century, remote from the concerns of religious and chivalric ideals of the previous period, and with a realistic view of life (a denial of the transcendent world), the didactic and moralizing mester de clerecía becomes imbued with satirical, humorous (e.g., Book of Good Love by the Archpriest of Hita), bitter, and pessimistic tones.
The most important work of mester de clerecía is The Book of Good Love by the Archpriest of Hita. Written in the first half of the fourteenth century, it is a work of great interest not only for its artistic values but also as a rich mosaic depicting issues and cultural trends of the Spanish Middle Ages.
The Book of Good Love
Subject
The book’s central theme is love, understood in both its human and divine dimensions. The tension arises from the work’s deliberate ambiguity. It is a miscellaneous book.
Plot and Structure
The work features a series of mock affairs involving the poet himself. This autobiographical narrative forms the core argument of the book, within which are inserted:
- Two allegorical episodes (the fight of the Archpriest with Don Love and the battle between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma).
- A paraphrase of Pamphilus (meaning ‘love all’), a 12th-century Latin comedy, which chronicles the love affair between the young Panfilo and Galatea, involving a pimp.
- A series of tales and fables from various sources.
- Multiple didactic, moral, and burlesque digressions.
- Several lyrical compositions, both religious and secular.
Metrics
It primarily uses the cuaderna vía (four-line monorhyme stanza), though sometimes replaced by sixteen-syllable Alexandrine verse. In its lyrical compositions, it uses arte menor (short-line verse).
Purpose
Regarding the work’s intention, the very name good love is confusing. It could refer to human love, sometimes understood as an art of seduction, and at other times as an unbridled passion devoid of spirituality. However, at the same time, the term may refer to divine love, which would align with the moralizing intention expressed by the author.
Definition of Good Love: Profane love between men and women as an enabling force, which opposes ‘crazy love’ (carnal love).
The advice on love comes from Ovid’s Ars Amandi.