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161-462: The book is considered to be one of the greatest works of all Spanish literature and is even the single topic of a Spanish literary journal, Celestinesca . La Celestina is usually regarded as marking the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the renaissance in Spanish literature. Although usually regarded as a novel, it is written as a continuous series of dialogues and can be taken as

322-578: A princeps edition prior to 1499. Some scholars wish to explain this discrepancy about the 1499 date, considering the version published in 1500 in Toledo to be the first edition; however, there is no positive proof of this, and there are some contradictions: The Toledo 1500 edition contains 16 acts, and also some stanzas with acrostic verses such as "el bachjller fernando de royas acabo la comedia de calysto y melybea y fve nascjdo en la puebla de montalvan", which means "the graduate Fernando de Rojas finished

483-502: A Dios, preguntándole por qué se pudre lentamente mi alma, por qué se pudren más de un millón de cadáveres en esta ciudad de Madrid, por qué mil millones de cadáveres se pudren lentamente en el mundo. Dime, ¿qué huerto quieres abonar con nuestra podredumbre? ¿Temes que se te sequen los grandes rosales del día, las tristes azucenas letales de tus noches? Poems by José Hierro , Blas de Otero , and Gabriel Celaya were more direct, penning poems with such transparent titles as Canto

644-569: A España (Hierro), A la inmensa mayoría (Otero), or La poesía es un arma cargada de futuro (Celaya). Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula ( IPA : / aɪ ˈ b ɪər i ə n / ), also known as Iberia , is a peninsula in south-western Europe . Mostly separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees , it includes the territories of Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal , comprising most of

805-452: A Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford , was published under the title The Spanish Bawd . Rojas makes a powerful impression with his characters, who appear before the reader full of life and psychological depth; they are human beings with an exceptional indirect characterization , which moves away from the usual archetypes of medieval literature . Some critics see them as allegories . The literary critic Stephen Gilman has come to deny

966-576: A brief period in the 1330s and 1340s, Castile tended to be nonetheless "essentially unstable" from a political standpoint until the late 15th century. Merchants from Genoa and Pisa were conducting an intense trading activity in Catalonia already by the 12th century, and later in Portugal. Since the 13th century, the Crown of Aragon expanded overseas; led by Catalans , it attained an overseas empire in

1127-435: A brothel and in charge of her two young employees, Elicia and Areúsa. When Calisto agrees, Sempronio plots with Celestina to make as much money out of his master as they can. Another servant of Calisto's, Pármeno, mistrusts Celestina because he used to work for her when he was a child. Pármeno warns his master not to use her. However Celestina convinces Pármeno to join her and Sempronio in taking advantage of Calisto. His reward

1288-486: A devastating impact on Spanish writing. Among the handful of civil war poets and writers, Miguel Hernández stands out. During the early dictatorship (1939–1955), literature followed dictator Francisco Franco 's reactionary vision of a second, Catholic Spanish golden age. By the mid-1950s, just as with the novel, a new generation which had only experienced the Spanish Civil War in childhood was coming of age. By

1449-521: A devastating impact on the trajectory of Spanish letters. In July 1936, Spain was at the height of its Silver Age. Every major writer of the three major generations—1898, 1914, and 1927—was still alive and productive. Those of 1914 and 1927 were at the height or just reaching the height of their literary powers. Several were recognized among Western civilization's most talented and influential writers. But by April 1939, Miguel de Unamuno, Antonio Machado, and Federico García Lorca, among others, were dead. All but

1610-691: A general cultural crisis in Spain. The "Disaster" of 1898 led established writers to seek practical political, economic, and social solutions in essays grouped under the literary heading of "Regeneracionismo". For a group of younger writers, among them Miguel de Unamuno , Pío Baroja , and José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín), the Disaster and its cultural repercussions inspired a deeper, more radical literary shift that affected both form and content. These writers, along with Ramón del Valle-Inclán , Antonio Machado , Ramiro de Maeztu , and Ángel Ganivet , came to be known as

1771-547: A greater sense of distance and objectivity. These writers had enjoyed more formal academic training than their predecessors, many taught within the walls of academia, and one, Azaña, was to become President and face of the Second Republic. Their genre of choice were the essay and the article, their arguments more systematic, and their tastes, more European. In contrast to Unamuno's existential obsessions or Machado's conceptual, earth-bound verse, Juan Ramón's poetry pursued

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1932-480: A horrible toothache that requires her aid, and manages to get the girdle off her and to fix another meeting. On her second visit, Celestina persuades the now willing Melibea to a rendezvous with Calisto. Upon hearing of the meeting set by Celestina, Calisto rewards the procuress with a valuable gold chain. The lovers arrange to meet in Melibea's garden the following night, while Sempronio and Pármeno keep watch. When

2093-665: A martyr to the Republican cause but this time as a post-war prisoner, fighting and writing as a soldier poet throughout the war and then languishing and dying in one of Franco's prisons in 1942. Among his important works, Perito en lunas (1933) from his pre-war surrealist days and Viento del pueblo (1937), evidence of the work of a soldier-poet, stand out. The earliest years of the post-war were characterized more by hunger, repression, and suffering than by any significant literature. The published works of this period were true to pseudo-fascist dictator Francisco Franco's reactionary vision of

2254-516: A more esoteric version of beauty and truth above all, while still manifesting an internalized sense of the existential dilemmas that plagued intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century. Juan Ramón was Spain's great modernist poet and the maestro of the coming vanguardist Generation of 1927. In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. José Ortega y Gasset became the spokesman for this and essential every generation of writers in

2415-442: A new type of prose named the verbal portrait. This form is demonstrated by Pulgar's work Claros varones de Castilla in which he represents the detailed lives of twenty-four distinguished contemporaries. He explores their moral and psychological natures as well as physical traits. Pulgar was the official historian of the monarchs Fernando and Isabel, the famous Catholic Monarchs of Spain. This position gave him close encounters with

2576-599: A permanent trading port in the Gadir colony c.  800 BCE in response to the increasing demand of silver from the Assyrian Empire . The seafaring Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians successively settled along the Mediterranean coast and founded trading colonies there over several centuries. In the 8th century BCE, the first Greek colonies , such as Emporion (modern Empúries ), were founded along

2737-492: A play, having been staged as such and filmed. The story tells of a bachelor, Calisto, who uses the old procuress and bawd Celestina to start an affair with Melibea, an unmarried girl kept in seclusion by her parents. Though the two use the rhetoric of courtly love , sex — not marriage — is their aim. When he dies in an accident, she commits suicide. The name Celestina has become synonymous with "procuress" in Spanish, especially an older woman used to further an illicit affair, and

2898-568: A population of 100,000 by the 10th century, Toledo 30,000 by the 11th century and Seville 80,000 by the 12th century. During the Middle Ages, the North of the peninsula housed many small Christian polities including the Kingdom of Castile , the Kingdom of Aragon , the Kingdom of Navarre , the Kingdom of León or the Kingdom of Portugal , as well as a number of counties that spawned from

3059-465: A prominent place for themselves within the Spanish cultural field. The Roman conquest and occupation of the peninsula, spanning from the 3rd century BCE to the 5h century CE, brought a fully developed Latin culture to Spanish territories. While the invasion of Germanic tribes in the fifth century CE put an end to Roman Spain, the tribes’ relative lack of advanced culture, including any kind of literary tradition, meant that any written literature produced in

3220-501: A real man—his battles, conquests, and daily life. The poet, name unknown, wrote the epic in about 1140 and Cid supposedly died forty years before in 1099. This epic represents realism, because nothing was exaggerated and the details are very real, even the geography correctly portrays the areas in which Cid traveled and lived. Unlike other European epics, the poem is not idealized and there is no presence of supernatural beings. It has assonance instead of rhyme and its lines vary in length,

3381-468: A result of Rojas humanizing his characters. One common feature of all of the characters (in the world of nobles as well as servants) is their individualism , their egoism , and their lack of altruism . The theme of greed is explained by Francisco José Herrera in an article about envy in La Celestina and related literature (meaning imitations, continuations, etc.), where he explained the motive of

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3542-637: A role in the conflict by providing key naval support to France that helped lead to that nation's eventual victory. After the accession of Henry III to the throne of Castile, the populace, exasperated by the preponderance of Jewish influence, perpetrated a massacre of Jews at Toledo. In 1391, mobs went from town to town throughout Castile and Aragon, killing an estimated 50,000 Jews, or even as many as 100,000, according to Jane Gerber . Women and children were sold as slaves to Muslims, and many synagogues were converted into churches. According to Hasdai Crescas , about 70 Jewish communities were destroyed. During

3703-688: A second Spanish golden age than to the material and existential anguish facing the majority of the country's population of the time. Neo-baroque poetry and paeans to Franco's Spain satisfied the censors but has enjoyed no subsequent critical shelf-life. Ironically, the narrative production of one of Franco's censors would provide the first sign of literary revival in post-war Spain. In 1942, Camilo José Cela 's novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte , used just enough experimental arrangement (temporally disjointed narrative development to problematize simple accusations of political cause-effect critique; prefaces and post-scripts that confuse authorial intentions) to avoid

3864-417: A sense of deep malaise at the social injustice, political bungling, and cultural indifference evident in contemporary Spanish society. Within a matter of years, these young authors had transformed their nation’s literary landscape. To be sure, established nineteenth century realists, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, continued to write novels and theater into the second decade of the twentieth century, and, again in

4025-542: A small handful of the remaining writers had fled into exile, dispersed across the length of the American continent, most never to enjoy the close associations of conferences, tertulias, and theater premiers that had so often united them in pre-war Madrid. Among the handful of civil war poets and writers, Miguel Hernández stands out. A young disciple and associate of the Generation of 1898, Hernández, like Lorca, became

4186-807: A social realist tradition that was as celebrated as it was short-lived. Spanish poetry experienced renewal along similar lines. Dámaso Alonso 's poem, "Insomnia" (1947) captures much of the angst and sense of violence that informed the works of Cela et al. and that would infuse the Spanish poetry of the era: Madrid es una ciudad de más de un millón de cadáveres (según las últimas estadísticas). A veces en la noche yo me revuelvo y me incorporo en este nicho en el que hace 45 años que me pudro, y paso largas horas oyendo gemir al huracán, o ladrar los perros, o fluir blandamente la luz de la luna. Y paso largas horas gimiendo como el huracán, ladrando como un perro enfurecido, fluyendo como la leche de la ubre caliente de una gran vaca amarilla. Y paso largas horas preguntándole

4347-567: A subversive element in the society , by spreading and facilitating sexual pleasure. She stands apart for her use of magic . Her character is inspired by the meddling characters of the comedies of Plautus and in works of the Middle Ages such as the Libro de Buen Amor ( The Book of Good Love ) by Juan Ruiz and Italian works like The Tale of Two Lovers by Enea Silvio Piccolomini and Elegía de madonna Fiammeta by Giovanni Boccaccio . She

4508-573: A sudden economic cessation. Many settlements in northern Castile and Catalonia were left forsaken. The plague marked the start of the hostility and downright violence towards religious minorities (particularly the Jews) as an additional consequence in the Iberian realms. The 14th century was a period of great upheaval in the Iberian realms. After the death of Peter the Cruel of Castile (reigned 1350–69),

4669-662: A universal manner (all things come to an end). He is still considered a poet of the Middle Ages in that he finds peace and finality in religion. The 15th century may be thought of as a pre-Renaissance period. Literary production increases greatly. Outstanding poets of this century include Juan de Mena and Íñigo López de Mendoza (Marquess of Santillana). Spanish literature of the Middle Ages concludes with La Celestina by Fernando de Rojas . Important Renaissance themes are poetry, with Garcilaso de la Vega and Juan Boscán ; religious literature, with Fray Luis de León , San Juan de la Cruz , and Santa Teresa de Jesús ; and prose, with

4830-758: A younger group of writers—mostly poets—began publishing works that from their beginnings revealed the extent to which younger artists were absorbing the literary experimentation of the writers of 1898 and 1914. Poets Pedro Salinas , Jorge Guillén , Federico García Lorca , Vicente Aleixandre , Dámaso Alonso , Rafael Alberti , Luis Cernuda , Manuel Altolaguirre were likewise the most closely tied to formal academia yet. Novelists such as Benjamín Jarnés , Rosa Chacel , Francisco Ayala , and Ramón J. Sender were equally experimental and academic. Many of this generation were full-time university professors, while others spent periods as guest teachers and students. All were scholars of their national literary heritage, again evidence of

4991-421: A “generation", contemporary critics and later literary historians were to catalogue and then interpret the arrival of new batches of authors in such generational terms for nearly the next one hundred years. Certainly, the terminology possesses a certain organizational elegance and indeed, recognizes the significant impact of major political and cultural events on changing literary expressions and tastes (for example,

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5152-420: Is Areúsa. As a seller of feminine knick-knacks and quack medicines, Celestina is permitted entrance into the home of Alisa and Melibea by pretending to sell thread. Upon being left alone with Melibea, Celestina tells her of a man in pain who could be cured by the touch of her girdle. When she mentions Calisto's name, Melibea becomes angry and tells her to go. But the crafty Celestina persuades her that Calisto has

5313-507: Is a frame story or short stories within an overall story. In this work, the Conde Lucanor seeks advice from his wise counselor, Patronio, who gives the advice through the telling of stories. Juan Manuel also wrote lesser-known works such as El libro de los estados on the social classes and El libro del caballero y escudero on philosophical discussions. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, writer Fernando del Pulgar (1436-1490?) created

5474-410: Is a literary archetype of this character, the masculine counterpart being Pandarus . While chasing his falcon through the fields, a rich young bachelor named Calisto enters a garden where he meets Melibea, the daughter of the house, and is immediately taken with her. Unable to see her again privately, he broods until his servant Sempronio suggests using the old procuress Celestina. She is the owner of

5635-606: Is characterized by the following points: In the Enlightenment of the 18th century, with the arrival of "the lights" to Spain, important topics are the prose of Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo , Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos , and José Cadalso ; the lyric of the Salmantine school (with Juan Meléndez Valdés ), the lyric of the Madrilenian group (with the story-tellers Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego ), and

5796-609: Is for this reason that after Sempronio and Pármeno kill Celestina she plots Calisto's death as revenge (and succeeds several months later). Prostitute who periodically works with Celestina but lives independently. Cousin to Elicia. Both she and her cousin deeply respect their mistress as they use words such as "Señora" to describe her. It is for this reason that after Sempronio and Pármeno kill Celestina she plots Calisto's death as revenge (and succeeds several months later). Personal servant to Melibea. Melibea's father. Melibea's mother. Spanish literature Spanish literature

5957-513: Is literature ( Spanish poetry , prose , and drama) written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the Kingdom of Spain . Its development coincides and frequently intersects with that of other literary traditions from regions within the same territory, particularly Catalan literature, Galician intersects as well with Latin, Jewish, and Arabic literary traditions of

6118-495: Is no indication of title or author. It is preserved in the Hispanic Society of New York City . On the first page of the 1500 edition of Toledo, which is for the first time entitled Comedia de Calisto y Melibea , it states: nuevamente revista y enmendada con la adición de los argumentos de cada un auto en principio ("newly reviewed and amended with the addition of the synopses of each act at its beginning"), alluding to

6279-621: Is testimony to a considerable input from various waves of (predominantly male) Western Steppe Herders from the Pontic–Caspian steppe during the Bronze Age. Iberia experienced a significant genetic turnover, with 100% of the paternal ancestry and 40% of the overall ancestry being replaced by peoples with steppe-related ancestry. In the Chalcolithic ( c.  3000 BCE), a series of complex cultures developed that would give rise to

6440-480: Is the most suggestive character in the work, to the point that she gives it its title. She is a colorful and vivid character, hedonistic , miserly, and yet full of life. She has such a deep understanding of the psychology of the other characters that she can convince even those who do not agree with her plans to accede to them. She uses people's greed, sexual appetite (which she helps create, then provides means to satisfy), and love to control them. She also represents

6601-463: Is the one who suggests to Calisto to ask Celestina for help with wooing Melibea; he is also the one who suggests to Celestina that by working together they could swindle money and other items of luxury from Calisto. Sempronio is in love with one of Celestina's prostitutes, Elicia. Through him, we can also see the sexism of how this work represents its day and age. After all, after he and Pármeno kill Celestina he cannot begin to even fathom being betrayed by

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6762-677: The Ṣaqāliba (literally meaning "slavs", although they were slaves of generic European origin) as well as Sudanese slaves. The Umayyad rulers faced a major Berber Revolt in the early 740s; the uprising originally broke out in North Africa (Tangier) and later spread across the peninsula. Following the Abbasid takeover from the Umayyads and the shift of the economic centre of the Islamic Caliphate from Damascus to Baghdad,

6923-582: The Arcipreste de Hita is an outstanding lyricist of the fourteenth century. His only work, Libro de buen amor is a framework tale in which he includes translations from Ovid, satires, little poems called serranillas , twenty-nine fables, a sermon on Christian armor, and many lyric poems that praise the Virgin Mary. Poet Íñigo López de Mendoza, the Marqués de Santillana (1398–1458), begins to show

7084-711: The Aurignacian , Gravettian , Solutrean and Magdalenian cultures, some of them characterized by the complex forms of the art of the Upper Paleolithic . During the Neolithic expansion , various megalithic cultures developed in the Iberian Peninsula. An open seas navigation culture from the east Mediterranean, called the Cardium culture , also extended its influence to the eastern coasts of

7245-443: The Enlightenment era of the 18th century, notable works include the prose of Feijoo , Jovellanos , and Cadalso ; the lyric of Juan Meléndez Valdés , Tomás de Iriarte and Félix María Samaniego ), and the theater, with Leandro Fernández de Moratín , Ramón de la Cruz , and Vicente García de la Huerta . In Romanticism (beginning of the 19th century) important topics are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets; prose;

7406-614: The House of Trastámara succeeded to the throne in the person of Peter's half brother, Henry II (reigned 1369–79). In the kingdom of Aragón, following the death without heirs of John I (reigned 1387–96) and Martin I (reigned 1396–1410), a prince of the House of Trastámara, Ferdinand I (reigned 1412–16), succeeded to the Aragonese throne. The Hundred Years' War also spilled over into the Iberian peninsula, with Castile particularly taking

7567-555: The Iberian Peninsula . The literature of Spanish America is an important branch of Spanish literature, with its own particular characteristics dating back to the earliest years of Spain’s conquest of the Americas (see Latin American literature ). The Roman conquest and occupation of the Iberian Peninsula beginning in the 3rd century BC brought a Latin culture to Spanish territories. The Muslim conquest in 711 CE brought

7728-457: The Mester de Clerecía became popular in the thirteenth century. It is the verse form of the learned poets, usually clerics (hence the name 'clerecía'). The poetry was formal, with carefully counted syllables in each line. Popular themes were Christian legends, lives of saints and tales from classical antiquity. The poems were recited to villagers in public plazas. Two traits separate this form from

7889-624: The Phocaeans that "it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with [...] Iberia." According to Strabo , prior historians used Iberia to mean the country "this side of the Ἶβηρος ( Ibēros , the Ebro ) as far north as the Rhône , but in his day they set the Pyrenees as the limit. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar , with

8050-745: The Phoenician alphabet and originated in Southwestern Iberia by the 7th century BCE has been tentatively proposed. In the sixth century BCE, the Carthaginians arrived in the peninsula while struggling with the Greeks for control of the Western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova (modern-day Cartagena, Spain ). In 218 BCE, during the Second Punic War against the Carthaginians,

8211-458: The Poema del Cid (El Cantar de mío Cid) (1140 CE) in the history of Spanish literature, they cannot be seen as a precursor to Spain's great epic poem. What the discovery of the jarchas makes clear instead is that from its origins, the literature of Spain has arisen out of and born witness to a rich, heterogeneous mix of cultures and languages. The epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid was written about

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8372-803: The Strait of Gibraltar and founded upon a vassalage relationship with the Crown of Castile, also insinuated itself into the European mercantile network, with its ports fostering intense trading relations with the Genoese as well, but also with the Catalans, and to a lesser extent, with the Venetians, the Florentines, and the Portuguese. Between 1275 and 1340, Granada became involved in the "crisis of

8533-565: The muwashah , maqama , and nawba . Important works include Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd , Hayy ibn Yaqdhan , The Incoherence of the Incoherence , and Hadith Bayad wa Riyad . The earliest recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based literature date from the same time and location, the rich mix of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures in Muslim Spain, in which Maimonides , Averroes , and others worked. The Jarchas , dating from

8694-518: The " Generation of 98 ". The label from its outset was controversial and even Azorín, the source of its origin, came to reject it. Nevertheless, it stuck as a way to describe a group of writers who turned in content from the more general exploration of universal middle class values characteristic of Nineteenth Century Realism to an obsession with questions of a more national nature. Their articles, essays, poems, and novels exploring Spanish history and geography carried existential overtones, expressing overall

8855-610: The 15th century, Portugal, which had ended its southwards territorial expansion across the Iberian Peninsula in 1249 with the conquest of the Algarve, initiated an overseas expansion in parallel to the rise of the House of Aviz , conquering Ceuta (1415) arriving at Porto Santo (1418), Madeira and the Azores , as well as establishing additional outposts along the North-African Atlantic coast. In addition, already in

9016-612: The 1898 connection, or a 1927 literary celebration that briefly united nearly every major vanguard poet in Spain). The next supposed “generation" of Spanish writers following those of ´98 already calls into question the value of such terminology. By the year 1914—the year of the outbreak of the First World War and of the publication of the first major work of the generation's leading voice, José Ortega y Gasset —a number of slightly younger writers had established their own place within

9177-590: The 9th to the 12th centuries C.E., were short poems spoken in local colloquial Hispano-Romance dialects, known as Mozarabic , but written in Arabic script. The Jarchas appeared at the end of longer poetry written in Arabic or Hebrew known as muwashshah , which were lengthy glosses on the ideas expressed in the jarchas. Typically spoken in the voice of a woman, the jarchas express the anxieties of love, particularly of its loss. This combination of Hispano-Romance expression with Arabic script, only discovered in 1948, locates

9338-474: The Atlantic side having no name. Elsewhere he says that Saguntum is "on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia." According to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia (Greek: Iberia ) as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political and geographic perspectives. The Latin word Hiberia , similar to

9499-688: The Carolingian Marca Hispanica . Christian and Muslim polities fought and allied among themselves in variable alliances. The Christian kingdoms progressively expanded south taking over Muslim territory in what is historiographically known as the " Reconquista " (the latter concept has been however noted as product of the claim to a pre-existing Spanish Catholic nation and it would not necessarily convey adequately "the complexity of centuries of warring and other more peaceable interactions between Muslim and Christian kingdoms in medieval Iberia between 711 and 1492"). The Caliphate of Córdoba

9660-579: The Catholic faith. There are two versions of the play. One is called a Comedy and has 16 acts; the other is considered a Tragic Comedy and has 21 acts. Although most scholars admit that an earlier version by an unknown author already existed, the first known edition is credited to be the Comedy published in Burgos by printer Fadrique de Basilea in 1499. The first page is missing and consequently there

9821-560: The Chalcolithic sites of Los Millares, the Argaric culture flourished in southeastern Iberia in from 2200 BC to 1550 BC, when depopulation of the area ensued along with disappearing of copper–bronze–arsenic metallurgy. The most accepted model for El Argar has been that of an early state society, most particularly in terms of class division, exploitation, and coercion, with agricultural production, maybe also human labour, controlled by

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9982-665: The Christian Iberian kingdoms by the beginning of the 13th century, in relation to the more or less conflictual border with Muslim lands. By the beginning of the 13th century, a power reorientation took place in the Iberian Peninsula (parallel to the Christian expansion in Southern Iberia and the increasing commercial impetus of Christian powers across the Mediterranean) and to a large extent, trade-wise,

10143-565: The Comedy of Calisto and Melibea and was born in La Puebla de Montalbán ." (This is the reason it is believed that Rojas was the original author of the play.) A similar edition appeared with minor changes "Comedia de Calisto y Melibea", Sevilla, 1501 A new edition entitled Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (Tragic Comedy of Calisto and Melibea) (Seville: Jacobo Cromberger ) appeared in 1502. This version contained 5 additional acts, bringing

10304-835: The Early Modern Period, between the completion of the Granada War in 1492 and the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516, the Hispanic Monarchy would make strides in the imperial expansion along the Mediterranean coast of the Maghreb. During the Late Middle Ages, the Jews acquired considerable power and influence in Castile and Aragon. Throughout the late Middle Ages, the Crown of Aragon took part in

10465-441: The Greek Iberia , literally translates to "land of the Hiberians". This word was derived from the river Hiberus (now called Ebro or Ebre). Hiber (Iberian) was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BCE. Virgil wrote impacatos (H)iberos ("restless Iberi") in his Georgics . Roman geographers and other prose writers from

10626-400: The Hispano-Roman population took place, ( muwalladum or Muladí ). After a long process, spurred on in the 9th and 10th centuries, the majority of the population in Al-Andalus eventually converted to Islam. The Muslims were referred to by the generic name Moors . The Muslim population was divided per ethnicity (Arabs, Berbers, Muladí), and the supremacy of Arabs over the rest of group

10787-429: The Iberian Peninsula continued along Romanized lines. Outstanding amongst the works produced is Saint Isidore of Seville’s ( c.  560–636 ) Etymologiae , an attempted summa of all classical knowledge. Called “the last scholar of the ancient world", St. Isidore penned theological and proto-scientific treatises, letters, and a series of histories that would serve as models for the rest of Western Europe throughout

10948-474: The Iberian Peninsula reorientated towards the North away from the Muslim World. During the Middle Ages, the monarchs of Castile and León, from Alfonso V and Alfonso VI (crowned Hispaniae Imperator ) to Alfonso X and Alfonso XI tended to embrace an imperial ideal based on a dual Christian and Jewish ideology. Despite the hegemonic ambitions of its rulers and the consolidation of the union of Castile and León after 1230, it should be pointed that, except for

11109-410: The Islamic army landed at Gibraltar and, in an eight-year campaign, occupied all except the northern kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula in the Umayyad conquest of Hispania . Al-Andalus ( Arabic : الإندلس , tr. al-ʾAndalūs , possibly "Land of the Vandals"), is the Arabic name given to Muslim Iberia. The Muslim conquerors were Arabs and Berbers ; following the conquest, conversion and arabization of

11270-416: The Mediterranean coast on the east, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians. Together with the presence of Phoenician and Greek epigraphy, several paleohispanic scripts developed in the Iberian Peninsula along the 1st millennium BCE. The development of a primordial paleohispanic script antecessor to the rest of paleohispanic scripts (originally supposed to be a non-redundant semi-syllabary ) derived from

11431-557: The Mediterranean during Classical Antiquity having no match until the Industrial Revolution . In addition to mineral extraction (of which the region was the leading supplier in the early Roman world, with production of the likes of gold, silver, copper, lead, and cinnabar ), Hispania also produced manufactured goods ( sigillata pottery, colourless glass , linen garments) fish and fish sauce ( garum ), dry crops (such as wheat and, more importantly, esparto ), olive oil , and wine . The process of Romanization spurred on throughout

11592-541: The Middle Ages includes popular poems and the courtly poetry of the nobles. During the 15th century the pre-Renaissance occurred and literary production increased greatly. In the Renaissance important topics were poetry, religious literature, and prose. In the 16th century the first Spanish novels appeared, Lazarillo de Tormes and Guzmán de Alfarache . In the Baroque era of the 17th century important works were

11753-650: The Middle Ages. The arrival of Muslim invaders in 711 CE brought the cultures of the Middle and Far East to the Iberian Peninsula and ultimately to all of Europe. During the era of relative religious tolerance that followed, writers such as the Jewish theologian Maimonides (1135–1204) or the Muslim polymath (1126–1198) Averroes penned works of theology, science, philosophy, and mathematics that would have lasting impacts on Hebrew and Muslim philosophy and prove essential to

11914-568: The Neanderthal Châtelperronian cultural period began. Emanating from Southern France , this culture extended into the north of the peninsula. It continued to exist until around 30,000 BP, when Neanderthal man faced extinction. About 40,000 years ago, anatomically modern humans entered the Iberian Peninsula from across the Pyrenees. On the Iberian Peninsula, modern humans developed a series of different cultures, such as

12075-766: The River Ebro (Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin ). The association was so well known it was hardly necessary to state; for example, Ibēria was the country "this side of the Ibērus" in Strabo. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called "the whole of the peninsula" Hiberia because of the Hiberus River. The river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BCE between Rome and Carthage, setting

12236-425: The Spanish cultural field. Leading voices include the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez , the academics and essayists Ramón Menéndez Pidal , Gregorio Marañón , Manuel Azaña , Eugenio d'Ors , and Ortega y Gasset, and the novelists Gabriel Miró , Ramón Pérez de Ayala , and Ramón Gómez de la Serna . While still driven by the national and existential questions that obsessed the writers of ´98, they approached these topics with

12397-621: The Strait", and was caught in a complex geopolitical struggle ("a kaleidoscope of alliances") with multiple powers vying for dominance of the Western Mediterranean, complicated by the unstable relations of Muslim Granada with the Marinid Sultanate . The conflict reached a climax in the 1340 Battle of Río Salado , when, this time in alliance with Granada, the Marinid Sultan (and Caliph pretender) Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman made

12558-730: The Suebi kingdom and its capital city, Bracara (modern day Braga ), in 584–585. They would also occupy the province of the Byzantine Empire (552–624) of Spania in the south of the peninsula . However, Balearic Islands remained in Byzantine hands until Umayyad conquest, which began in 703 CE and was completed in 902 CE. In 711, a Muslim army conquered the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania . Under Tariq ibn Ziyad ,

12719-547: The Western Mediterranean, with a presence in Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics , Sicily and Sardinia , and even conquering Naples in the mid-15th century. Genoese merchants invested heavily in the Iberian commercial enterprise with Lisbon becoming, according to Virgínia Rau , the "great centre of Genoese trade" in the early 14th century. The Portuguese would later detach their trade to some extent from Genoese influence. The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada , neighbouring

12880-472: The aftermath of the conquest increased mining extractive processes in the southwest of the peninsula (which required a massive number of forced laborers, initially from Hispania and latter also from the Gallic borderlands and other locations of the Mediterranean), bringing in a far-reaching environmental outcome vis-à-vis long-term global pollution records, with levels of atmospheric pollution from mining across

13041-479: The anonymous El Lazarillo de Tormes . Among the principal features of the Renaissance were the revival of learning based on classical sources, the rise of courtly patronage, the development of perspective in painting, and advances in science. The most important characteristics of the Renaissance are: In the Baroque of the 17th century important topics are the prose of Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián ;

13202-453: The arrival of Spain's Second Republic in 1931, the Generation's poets reached the apex of their experimental writings, manifesting a clear awareness of the international vanguard “—isms" sweeping major Western capitals of the day. After 1931, the Generation's writing increasingly displays the imprint of the political and social stresses that would lead to Spain's bloody civil war. The Spanish Civil War , lasting from July 1936 to April 1939, had

13363-561: The awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature. It elevated folk art, nature and custom. The characteristics of the works of Romanticism are: Various are the themes of the romanticist works: In Realism (end of the 19th century), which is mixed with Naturalism , important topics are the novel, with Juan Valera , José María de Pereda , Benito Pérez Galdós , Emilia Pardo Bazán , Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) , Armando Palacio Valdés , and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez ; poetry, with Ramón de Campoamor , Gaspar Núñez de Arce , and other poets;

13524-468: The bloodless coup of 1868 and that would come to a tragic end with the outbreak of civil war in July 1936. The writing of this supposed generation can be roughly divided into three moments. In their early years their work arises still out of mostly local and national traditions, culminating in their united celebration of the tri-centennial of the death of Golden Age poet Luis de Góngora . From mid decade until

13685-461: The case of Galdós, were much admired by the new generation of writers. Nevertheless, with the novels of Unamuno, Azorín, Pío Baroja, and Valle Inclán, the theater of the latter, and the poetry of Antonio Machado and Unamuno, a definitive literary shift had taken place—a shift in both form and content—pointing towards the more celebrated experimental writings of Spain's vanguard writers of the 1920s. Thanks to Azorín's designation of his fellow writers as

13846-524: The causes of the decadence of Spain as a nation between the 19th and the 20th century is called Regenerationism. It expresses a pessimist judgement about Spain. The regenerationist intellectuals divulgated their studies in journals with a big diffusion, so the movement expanded. Some important Modernist authors are Salvador Rueda , Juan Ramón Jiménez , Miguel de Unamuno and Rubén Darío . The destruction of Spain's fleet in Cuba by U.S. gunboats in 1898 provoked

14007-608: The censors´ cuts and to present to discerning Spanish readers an exposé of a spiritually troubled, socially impoverished, and structurally violent society. Cela was to remain for the next five decades as one of Spain's most important novelists, eventually receiving the Nobel Prize for literature in 1989. With the 1945 publication of the Nadal Prize winning Nada by Carmen Laforet and the 1947 release of Miguel Delibes 's La sombra del ciprés es alargada , readers of intelligent Spanish narrative at last had cause for hope. While

14168-486: The characters in this book, making the work realistic and detailed. Lyric poetry in the Middle Ages can be divided into three groups: the jarchas, the popular poems originating from folk-songs sung by commoners, and the courtly poetry of the nobles. Alfonso X of Castile fits into the third group with his series of three hundred poems, written in Galician: Las cantigas de Santa María. Another poet, Juan Ruiz, or

14329-588: The culture of Los Millares was followed by that of El Argar . During the Early Bronze Age, southeastern Iberia saw the emergence of important settlements, a development that has compelled some archeologists to propose that these settlements indicate the advent of state-level social structures. From this centre, bronze metalworking technology spread to other cultures like the Bronze of Levante , South-Western Iberian Bronze and Las Cogotas . Preceded by

14490-442: The cultures of West Asia and the North Africa to the peninsula, creating Andalusi literary traditions . In medieval Spanish literature , the earliest recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based literature mix Muslim, Jewish, and Christian culture. One of the notable works is the epic poem Cantar de Mio Cid , composed some time between 1140 and 1207. Spanish prose gained popularity in the mid-thirteenth century. Lyric poetry in

14651-423: The deaths. Areúsa and Elicia come up with a plan to punish Calisto and Melibea for being the cause of Celestina, Sempronio, and Pármeno's downfall. After a month of Calisto sneaking around and seeing Melibea at night in her garden, Areúsa and Elicia enact their plan of revenge. Calisto returns to the garden for another night with Melibea; while hastily leaving because of a ruckus he heard in the street, he falls from

14812-524: The early 1960s, Spanish authors moved towards a restless literary experimentation. When Franco died in 1975, the important work of establishing democracy had an immediate impact on Spanish letters. Over the next several years a wealth of young new writers, among them Juan José Millás , Rosa Montero , Javier Marías , Luis Mateo Díez , José María Merino , Félix de Azúa , Cristina Fernández Cubas , Enrique Vila-Matas , Carme Riera , and later Antonio Muñoz Molina and Almudena Grandes , would begin carving out

14973-761: The early fifth century, Germanic peoples occupied the peninsula, namely the Suebi , the Vandals ( Silingi and Hasdingi ) and their allies, the Alans . Only the kingdom of the Suebi ( Quadi and Marcomanni ) would endure after the arrival of another wave of Germanic invaders, the Visigoths , who occupied all of the Iberian Peninsula and expelled or partially integrated the Vandals and the Alans. The Visigoths eventually occupied

15134-483: The early models laid down by Cela and Laforet. Equally influenced by the films of the Italian neorealists, novelists such as Luis Romero ( La noria , 1951), Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio ( El jarama , 1956), Jesús Fernández Santos ( Los bravos , 1956), Carmen Martín Gaite ( Entre visillos , 1957), Ignacio Aldecoa ( El fulgor y la sangre , 1954), and Juan Goytisolo ( Juegos de manos , 1954) produced

15295-464: The emergence of Renaissance humanism in Spain. Thus, 1492 began the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is precisely in the 1490s when the first editions of Comedy of Calisto and Melibea began to appear. The unification of all the territories of the Iberian Peninsula , except Portugal and the Kingdom of Navarre , under one king and one religion, Catholic Christianity, took place in this period. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz highlighted

15456-399: The entire first act is about his love for her. Even going as far as to 'create a new religion' worshipping her (Act 1 pg 92-93). He is also quite insecure as, after he gets rejected, he is easily convinced to go to the witch Celestina for assistance. In the 16-act version, Calisto dies as he falls while climbing down a ladder after a sexual encounter with Melibea. Servant to Calisto. Sempronio

15617-767: The fall of the Western Roman Empire and the consolidation of Romance languages , the word "Iberia" continued the Roman word Hiberia and the Greek word Ἰβηρία . The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians , by voyaging westward on the Mediterranean . Hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia , which he wrote about c.  500 BCE . Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of

15778-725: The feebleness of the taifa principalities, Ferdinand I of León seized Lamego and Viseu (1057–1058) and Coimbra (1064) away from the Taifa of Badajoz (at times at war with the Taifa of Seville ); Meanwhile, in the same year Coimbra was conquered, in the Northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, the Kingdom of Aragon took Barbastro from the Hudid Taifa of Lérida as part of an international expedition sanctioned by Pope Alexander II. Most critically, Alfonso VI of León-Castile conquered Toledo and its wider taifa in 1085, in what it

15939-634: The first Roman troops occupied the Iberian Peninsula, known to them as Hispania . After 197, the territories of the peninsula most accustomed to external contact and with the most urban tradition (the Mediterranean Coast and the Guadalquivir Valley) were divided by Romans into Hispania Ulterior and Hispania Citerior . Local rebellions were quelled, with a 195 Roman campaign under Cato the Elder ravaging hotspots of resistance in

16100-566: The first century BC. The peninsula was also the battleground of civil wars between rulers of the Roman republic; such as the Sertorian War , and the conflict between Caesar and Pompey later in the century. During their 600-year occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Romans introduced the Latin language that influenced many of the languages that exist today in the Iberian peninsula. In

16261-579: The first half of the twentieth century. In essays like “Meditations on the Quijote," “The Rebellion of the Masses," and most famously, “The Dehumanization of Art," Ortega laid out theories of art and society that lucidly explained and celebrated twentieth century vanguard experimentation while holding fast to an elitist social vision whose eclipse this art ironically expressed. The most elusive voice of this generation, and arguably, unclassifiable within this group

16422-434: The first modern book of laws of the land written in the people's language. Another work was La primera crónica general which accounted for the history of Spain from the creation until the end of Alfonso's father's reign, San Fernando. For his direction of these works and many others he directed, Alfonso X is called the father of Spanish prose. His nephew, Don Juan Manuel is famous for his prose work El Conde Lucanor which

16583-558: The flowering of the European Renaissance centuries later. While none of their works can be considered direct ancestors of a Spanish literary tradition, it was out of the cultural milieu fostered by such intellectual energy that the first written manifestations of a Spanish literature proper arise. The period of Islamic rule in Iberia from 711 to 1492 brought many new literary traditions to Spain. Most literature at this time

16744-444: The former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior for 'near' and 'far' Hispania. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces : Hispania Baetica , Hispania Tarraconensis , and Hispania Lusitania . Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. (The name Iberia

16905-402: The fresh, joyful experimentation of Spain's "Silver Age" writers had disappeared, Cela, Laforet, and Delibes at least showed a renewed commitment to a kind of writing that first, was connected to Spain's material reality, and second, would stretch itself aesthetically in its attempts to capture the experience. By the middle of the next decade, a whole new generation of novelists was latching onto

17066-459: The gossipers and servants to be "greed and robbery", respectively, in the face of the motives of the nobles, which are raging lust and the defense of social and family honor . The private benefit of the lower-class characters forms a substitute for the love/lust present for the upper class. Fernando de Rojas liked to create characters in pairs, to help build character development through relationships between complementary or opposing characters. In

17227-529: The history of Spain took place during the union of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon in 1492. These events were the discovery of the Americas , the conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews . It is also the year that Antonio de Nebrija published the first grammar of the Spanish language, together with Nebrija's own teachings at the University of Salamanca , where Fernando de Rojas studied, favoring

17388-432: The impact of the calls of “Regeneracionistas" and the Generation of 1898 for Spanish intelligence to turn at least partially inwards. This group of poets continues to be, without contest, the most celebrated and studied of Spain's twentieth century writers. Their work provides a capstone to what some have called the “Silver Age" of Spanish Letters, a period that began with the veritable explosion of novel production following

17549-504: The importance of being Christian in a society that has warned against members of other religions, such as Jews and Muslims, and even came to outright rejection. Society was suspicious of converts, such as Christians who had been Jews before or had Jewish ancestry, and those who had to hide their conditions. Finally, those of other religions were expelled from the kingdom and the Inquisition would enforce orthodoxy among those who professed

17710-639: The inhabitants of the territory with the environment. By the Iron Age , starting in the 8th century BCE, the Iberian Peninsula consisted of complex agrarian and urban civilizations, either Pre-Celtic or Celtic (such as the Celtiberians , Gallaeci , Astures , Celtici , Lusitanians and others), the cultures of the Iberians in the eastern and southern zones and the cultures of the Aquitanian in

17871-515: The ladder used to scale the high garden wall and dies. After confessing to her father the recent events of her love affair and Calisto's death, Melibea jumps from the tower of the house and dies too. La Celestina was written during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella , whose marriage took place in 1469 and lasted until 1504, the year of Isabella's death, which occupies the last phase of the Pre-Renaissance for Spain. Three major events in

18032-427: The larger hilltop settlements, and the elite using violence in practical and ideological terms to clamp down on the population. Ecological degradation, landscape opening, fires, pastoralism, and maybe tree cutting for mining have been suggested as reasons for the collapse. The culture of the motillas developed an early system of groundwater supply plants (the so-called motillas ) in the upper Guadiana basin (in

18193-429: The last Marinid attempt to set up a power base in the Iberian Peninsula. The lasting consequences of the resounding Muslim defeat to an alliance of Castile and Portugal with naval support from Aragon and Genoa ensured Christian supremacy over the Iberian Peninsula and the preeminence of Christian fleets in the Western Mediterranean. The 1348–1350 bubonic plague devastated large parts of the Iberian Peninsula, leading to

18354-554: The latter romanticism (post-romanticism) some appear: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and Rosalía de Castro . Some anti-romantic poets are Ramón de Campoamor and Gaspar Núñez de Arce . In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature Romanticism stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and

18515-506: The limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian , uses Ibērus. With reference to this border, Polybius states that the "native name" is Ibēr , apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination. The early range of these natives, which geographers and historians place from the present southern Spain to

18676-518: The lyric of the Sevillian school; and also the theater, with Leandro Fernández de Moratín , Ramón de la Cruz and Vicente García de la Huerta . Enlightenment thinkers sought to apply systematic thinking to all forms of human activity, carrying it to the ethical and governmental spheres in exploration of the individual, society and the state. Three phases in the Spanish literature of the 18th century are distinguished: Early Romanticism appeared with

18837-453: The mediterranean slave trade, with Barcelona (already in the 14th century), Valencia (particularly in the 15th century) and, to a lesser extent, Palma de Mallorca (since the 13th century), becoming dynamic centres in this regard, involving chiefly eastern and Muslim peoples. Castile engaged later in this economic activity, rather by adhering to the incipient atlantic slave trade involving sub-saharan people thrusted by Portugal (Lisbon being

18998-424: The mester de juglaría: didacticism and erudition. Gonzalo de Berceo was one of the greatest advocates of this school, writing on religious subjects. Spanish prose gained popularity in the mid-thirteenth century when King Alfonso X of Castile gave support and recognition to the writing form. He, with the help of his groups of intellectuals, directed the composition of many prose works including Las siete partidas,

19159-501: The most common length being fourteen syllables . This type of verse is known as mester de juglaria (verse form of the minstrels). The epic is divided into three parts, also known as cantos. Medieval Spanish poets recognized the Mester de Juglaría as a literary form written by the minstrels (juglares) and composed of varying line length and use of assonance instead of rhyme. These poems were sung to uneducated audiences, nobles and peasants alike. This Castilian narrative poetry known as

19320-462: The movement away from the traditions of the Middle Ages. He shows a knowledge of Latin authors and familiarity with the works of Dante and Petrarch . Mendoza was also the first to introduce the sonnet into Spanish literature. The last great poet of the Middle Ages is Jorge Manrique . He is famous for his work which laments the death of his father, Coplas a la muerte de su padre . In this piece, Manrique shows classical feelings by expressing himself in

19481-497: The name did not describe a single geographical entity or a distinct population; the same name was used for the Kingdom of Iberia , natively known as Kartli in the Caucasus , the core region of what would later become the Kingdom of Georgia . It was Strabo who first reported the delineation of Iberia from Gaul ( Keltikē ) by the Pyrenees and included the entire land mass southwest (he says "west") from there. With

19642-561: The northeastern Ebro Valley and beyond. The threat to Roman interests posed by Celtiberians and Lusitanians in uncontrolled territories lingered in. Further wars of indigenous resistance, such as the Celtiberian Wars and the Lusitanian War , were fought in the 2nd century. Urban growth took place, and population progressively moved from hillforts to the plains. An example of the interaction of slaving and ecocide ,

19803-515: The novelists Gabriel Miró , Ramón Pérez de Ayala , and Ramón Gómez de la Serna . Around 1920 a younger group of writers—mostly poets—began publishing works that from their beginnings revealed the extent to which younger artists were absorbing the literary experimentation of the writers of 1898 and 1914. Poets were closely tied to formal academia. Novelists such as Benjamín Jarnés , Rosa Chacel , Francisco Ayala , and Ramón J. Sender were equally experimental and academic. The Spanish Civil War had

19964-513: The peninsula in 1146. Somewhat straying from the trend taking place in other locations of the Latin West since the 10th century, the period comprising the 11th and 13th centuries was not one of weakening monarchical power in the Christian kingdoms. The relatively novel concept of "frontier" (Sp: frontera ), already reported in Aragon by the second half of the 11th century become widespread in

20125-777: The peninsula's first civilizations and to extensive exchange networks reaching to the Baltic , Middle East and North Africa . Around 2800 – 2700 BCE, the Beaker culture , which produced the Maritime Bell Beaker , probably originated in the vibrant copper-using communities of the Tagus estuary and spread from there to many parts of western Europe. The Bronze Age began on the Iberian Peninsula in 2100 cal. BC according to radiocarbon datings of several key sites. Bronze Age cultures developed beginning c.  1800 BCE, when

20286-533: The peninsula, possibly as early as the 5th millennium BCE. These people may have had some relation to the subsequent development of the Iberian civilization . As is the case for most of the rest of Southern Europe, the principal ancestral origin of modern Iberians are Early European Farmers who arrived during the Neolithic. The large predominance of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R1b, common throughout Western Europe ,

20447-424: The play in general there are two opposite groups of characters, the servants and the nobles, and within each group are characters divided into pairs: Pármeno and Sempronio, Tristán and Sosia, Elicia and Areúsa, in the group of servants, and Calisto and Melibea, Pleberio and Alisa, in the group of nobles. Only Celestina and Lucrecia do not have a corresponding character, but this is because they perform opposite roles in

20608-438: The plot: Celestina is the element that catalyzes the tragedy, and represents a life lived with wild abandon, while Lucrecia, Melibea's personal servant, represents the other extreme, total oppression. In this sense, the character of the rascal Centurio added in the second version is an addition with little function, although he has something to do with the disorder that calls the attention of Calisto and causes his death. Celestina

20769-408: The possibility of analyzing them as characters, based on the belief that Rojas limited dialogue in which interlocutors respond to a given situation, so that the sociological depth can thus be argued only on extratextual elements. Lida de Malkiel, another critic, speaks of objectivity, whereby different characters are judged in different manners. Thus, the contradictory behavior of characters would be

20930-524: The present southern France along the Mediterranean coast, is marked by instances of a readable script expressing a yet unknown language, dubbed " Iberian ". Whether this was the native name or was given to them by the Greeks for their residence near the Ebro remains unknown. Credence in Polybius imposes certain limitations on etymologizing: if the language remains unknown, the meanings of the words, including Iber, must also remain unknown. In modern Basque ,

21091-404: The prose of Francisco de Quevedo and Baltasar Gracián . A notable author was Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra , famous for his masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha . In this novel Cervantes consolidated the form of literature that the picaresque novel had established in Spain to a fictional narrative that became the template for many novelists throughout the history of Spanish literature. In

21252-540: The region, as well as the tiny adjuncts of Andorra , Gibraltar , and, pursuant to the traditional definition of the Pyrenees as the peninsula's northeastern boundary, a small part of France . With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi), and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula . The Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with

21413-520: The remaining taifas. The Almoravids in the Iberian peninsula progressively relaxed strict observance of their faith, and treated both Jews and Mozarabs harshly, facing uprisings across the peninsula, initially in the Western part. The Almohads , another North-African Muslim sect of Masmuda Berber origin who had previously undermined the Almoravid rule south of the Strait of Gibraltar, first entered

21574-582: The rise of a Spanish literary tradition in the cultural heterogeneity that characterized Medieval Spanish society and politics. However, the Mozarabic language of the Jarchas appears to be a separate Romance language whose evolution from Vulgar Latin paralleled that of Castilian Spanish rather than deriving from or fusing into the latter. Hence, while the relatively recent discovery of the Jarchas challenges pride of chronological place that belonged for so long to

21735-440: The singular figure of Manuel José Quintana . In Romanticism (beginning of the 19th century) important topics are: the poetry of José de Espronceda and other poets; prose, which can have several forms (the historical novel, scientific prose, the description of regional customs, journalism —where Mariano José de Larra can be mentioned—; the theater, with Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas), José Zorrilla , and other authors. In

21896-463: The southern meseta ) in a context of extreme aridification in the area in the wake of the 4.2-kiloyear climatic event , which roughly coincided with the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age. Increased precipitation and recovery of the water table from about 1800 BC onward should have led to the forsaking of the motillas (which may have flooded) and the redefinition of the relation of

22057-684: The species Homo erectus , Homo heidelbergensis , or a new species called Homo antecessor . Around 200,000 BP , during the Lower Paleolithic period, Neanderthals first entered the Iberian Peninsula. Around 70,000 BP, during the Middle Paleolithic period, the last glacial event began and the Neanderthal Mousterian culture was established. Around 37,000 BP, during the Upper Paleolithic ,

22218-562: The terms 'Spanish Peninsula' or 'Pyrenaean Peninsula'. The Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited by members of the Homo genus for at least 1.2 million years as remains found in the sites in the Atapuerca Mountains demonstrate. Among these sites is the cave of Gran Dolina , where six hominin skeletons, dated between 780,000 and one million years ago, were found in 1994. Experts have debated whether these skeletons belong to

22379-518: The theater is notable ( Lope de Vega , Pedro Calderón de la Barca , and Tirso de Molina ); and poetry with Luis de Góngora (who is a Culteranist ) and Francisco de Quevedo (who is a Conceptist ). In the works of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra notable novels are La Galatea and Don Quixote de la Mancha . The Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music. The Baroque

22540-488: The theater, with José Echegaray , Manuel Tamayo y Baus , and other dramatists; and the literary critics, emphasizing Menéndez Pelayo . In Modernism several currents appear: Parnasianism , Symbolism , Futurism , and Creationism . The destruction of Spain's fleet in Cuba by the U.S. in 1898 provoked a crisis in Spain. A group of younger writers, among them Miguel de Unamuno , Pío Baroja , and José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín), made changes to literature's form and content. By

22701-589: The theater, with José Echegaray , Manuel Tamayo y Baus , and other dramatists; and the literary critics, emphasizing Menéndez Pelayo . Realism offered depictions of contemporary life and society 'as they were'. In the spirit of general "Realism," Realist authors opted for depictions of everyday and banal activities and experiences, instead of a romanticized or similarly stylized presentation. The realistic works of this period are characterized by: In Modernism several currents appear: Parnassianism , Symbolism , Futurism , and Creationism . Literary Modernism in Spain

22862-438: The theater, with Ángel de Saavedra (Duke of Rivas), José Zorrilla , and other authors. In Realism (end of the 19th century), which is mixed with Naturalism, important topics are the novel, with Juan Valera , José María de Pereda , Benito Pérez Galdós , Emilia Pardo Bazán , Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) , Armando Palacio Valdés , and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez ; poetry, with Ramón de Campoamor , Gaspar Núñez de Arce , and other poets;

23023-457: The time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania . In Greek and Roman antiquity, the name Hesperia was used for both the Italian and Iberian Peninsula; in the latter case Hesperia Ultima (referring to its position in the far west) appears as form of disambiguation from the former among Roman writers. Also since Roman antiquity, Jews gave the name Sepharad to the peninsula. As they became politically interested in

23184-506: The total to 21. Another edition with the title Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (Tragic Comedy of Calisto and Melibea) (Valencia: ) appeared in 1514. This version contained those 5 additional acts, with the total of 21. In 1526 a version was published in Toledo that included an extra act called the Acto de Traso, named after one of the characters who appears in that act. It became Act XIX of

23345-454: The victim of a strong passion induced by Celestina's spell. She is really bound by her social conscience. She worries about her honor , not modesty , not her concept of what is moral. Her love is more real and less "literary" than that of Calisto: her love motivates her actions, and Celestina's "spell" allows her to retain her honor. A young nobleman who falls madly in love with Melibea. He is shown to be quite egotistical and full of passion as

23506-554: The view of Jaime Vicens Vives , "the most powerful state in Europe". Abd-ar-Rahman III also managed to expand the clout of Al-Andalus across the Strait of Gibraltar, waging war, as well as his successor, against the Fatimid Empire . Between the 8th and 12th centuries, Al-Andalus enjoyed a notable urban vitality, both in terms of the growth of the preexisting cities as well as in terms of founding of new ones: Córdoba reached

23667-501: The weary Calisto returns home at dawn to sleep, his two servants go round to Celestina's house to get their share of the gold. She tries to cheat them and in rage they kill her in front of Elicia. After jumping out of the window in an attempt to escape the Night Guard, Sempronio and Pármeno are caught and are beheaded later that day in the town square. Elicia, who knows what happened to Celestina, Sempronio, and Pármeno, tells Areúsa of

23828-553: The western portion of the Pyrenees. As early as the 12th century BCE, the Phoenicians , a thalassocratic civilization originally from the Eastern Mediterranean, began to explore the coastline of the peninsula, interacting with the metal-rich communities in the southwest of the peninsula (contemporarily known as the semi-mythical Tartessos ). Around 1100 BCE, Phoenician merchants founded the trading colony of Gadir or Gades (modern day Cádiz ). Phoenicians established

23989-489: The western province of al-Andalus was marginalised and ultimately became politically autonomous as independent emirate in 756, ruled by one of the last surviving Umayyad royals, Abd al-Rahman I . Al-Andalus became a center of culture and learning, especially during the Caliphate of Córdoba . The Caliphate reached the height of its power under the rule of Abd-ar-Rahman III and his successor al-Hakam II , becoming then, in

24150-468: The women, for the women are now their property. Servant to Calisto. Son of a prostitute who was friends with Celestina many years ago. As a child, Pármeno worked for Celestina in her brothel doing odd-jobs around the house and the town. Pármeno is in love with the prostitute Areúsa. A prostitute who lives with and works for Celestina. Cousin to Areúsa. Both she and her cousin deeply respect their mistress as they use words such as "Señora" to describe her. It

24311-601: The word ibar means "valley" or "watered meadow", while ibai means "river", but there is no proof connecting the names with Ebro or Iberia . The word Iberia comes from the Latin word Hiberia originating from the Ancient Greek word Ἰβηρία ( Ibēríā ), used by Greek geographers under the rule of the Roman Empire to refer to what is known today in English as the Iberian Peninsula. At that time,

24472-573: The work, bring the total number of acts to 22. According to the 1965 edition of the play edited by M. Criado de Val and G. D. Trotter, "Its literary value does not have the intensity necessary to grant it a permanent place in the structure of the book, although various ancient editions of the play include it." The first translation of the work into another language was that by Alfonso Ordoñez into Italian, appearing in 1506. An anonymous translation into French first appeared in 1527 and went through many editions. In 1631, an English translation by James Mabbe ,

24633-454: The year 1914—the year of the outbreak of the First World War and of the publication of the first major work of the generation's leading voice, José Ortega y Gasset —a number of slightly younger writers had established their own place within the Spanish cultural field. Leading voices include the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez , the academics and essayists Ramón Menéndez Pidal , Gregorio Marañón , Manuel Azaña , Eugenio d'Ors , and Ortega y Gasset, and

24794-554: Was a recurrent causal for strife, rivalry and hatred, particularly between Arabs and Berbers. Arab elites could be further divided in the Yemenites (first wave) and the Syrians (second wave). Christians and Jews were allowed to live as part of a stratified society under the dhimmah system , although Jews became very important in certain fields. Some Christians migrated to the Northern Christian kingdoms, while those who stayed in Al-Andalus progressively arabised and became known as musta'arab ( mozarabs ). The slave population comprised

24955-489: Was ambiguous, being also the name of the Kingdom of Iberia in the Caucasus.) Whatever languages may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones , which was preserved as a language isolate by the barrier of the Pyrenees. The modern phrase "Iberian Peninsula" was coined by the French geographer Jean-Baptiste Bory de Saint-Vincent on his 1823 work "Guide du Voyageur en Espagne" . Prior to that date, geographers had used

25116-408: Was influenced by the " disaster of '98 ", Regenerationism, and the Free Institution of Education (founded by Giner de los Ríos ). Modernism was rooted in the idea that "traditional" forms of art, literature, religious faith, social organization, and daily life had become outdated; therefore it was essential to sweep them aside. The intellectual movement that thinks objectively and scientifically about

25277-408: Was once a prostitute , and now she dedicates her time to arranging discreet meetings between illicit lovers, and at the same time uses her house as a brothel for the prostitutes Elicia and Areusa. Melibea is a strong-willed girl, in whom repression appears as forced and unnatural; she feels like a slave to the hypocrisy that has existed in her house since her childhood. In the play she appears to be

25438-460: Was produced in standard Arabic, though poetry and other forms of literature of the Jewish golden age found expression in Judeo-Arabic or Hebrew . Maimonides , for example, wrote his magnum opus The Guide for the Perplexed in Arabic with Hebrew script . Other major literary figures of the time include Ibn Arabi , Al-Mu'tamid ibn Abbad , Ibn al-Khatib , Ibn Zaydún and Hafsa Bint al-Hajj al-Rukuniyya . Important literary styles include

25599-431: Was seen as a critical event at the time, entailing also a huge territorial expansion, advancing from the Sistema Central to La Mancha . In 1086, following the siege of Zaragoza by Alfonso VI of León-Castile, the Almoravids , religious zealots originally from the deserts of the Maghreb, landed in the Iberian Peninsula, and, having inflicted a serious defeat to Alfonso VI at the battle of Zalaca , began to seize control of

25760-406: Was subsumed in a period of upheaval and civil war (the Fitna of al-Andalus ) and collapsed in the early 11th century, spawning a series of ephemeral statelets, the taifas . Until the mid 11th century, most of the territorial expansion southwards of the Kingdom of Asturias/León was carried out through a policy of agricultural colonization rather than through military operations; then, profiting from

25921-452: Was the novelist Ramón Gómez de la Serna who carried the narrative experiments of Unamuno and Valle Inclán to absurd extremes, such as in his 1923 novel, El novelista , where varieties of plays with narrative subjectivity result in chapters envisioned through the eyes and voice of street lamps. More approachable and enduring are Gómez de la Serna's “Greguerías," an original form of aphorism that he described as “humor plus metaphor." Around 1920

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