A Wild Fable: Affect and Reception of Fernando de Rojas’ Celestina (1499)

Abstract

Fernando de Rojas’ Celestina (1499) is one of the first books of prose fiction written in Spanish after the creation of the printing press. In Spain’s history of literature , Celestina is often considered the second most influential text after Cervantes’ Don Quixote, for its literary genius as well as for its success in Spain and throughout Europe. The chapter explores the question of how Celestina, and its eponymous character, managed to move its readership to the point that the narrative became one of the most successful works in early modernity. The essay identifies two sixteenth-century audiences of readers for Celestina: first, an educated humanist community made up primarily of students at the University of Salamanca—the intended readers—and second, a larger audience of lay readers (a group that most likely sealed the work’s success). Combining socio-literary-historical aspects of Celestina’s reception with research on the cognitive and affective mechanisms engaged in fiction reading, the chapter looks anew at the narrative’s reception history while considering how both sixteenth- and twenty-first-century mind science provides us with a more holistic picture of cognition and culture in the early modern period.