Upon seeing Melibea, he is immediately struck by her beauty. One day young man Calisto’s falcon gets away from him, and he wanders into Melibea’s yard to retrieve it. Celestina is “wise in every wickedness that exists”. She owns this novel.Ĭelestina is a fount of earthy wisdom. However Celestina is a strong female character. Celestina is usually referred to as “the filthy old whore”. If the girl doesn’t happen to be a virgin, Celestina does the operation to make the girl a virgin again. Old woman Celestina makes her living procuring fresh virgin girls for the monks, friars, and priests in the church. The women are too, but most of them try to hide it. In ‘Celestina’ the men are openly obsessed with sex. ‘La Celestina’ contains some of the wildest, most scandalous but also most direct, remarks and conversations about men and women you will ever read. But what was life really like for everyone else? That is one reason I read ‘La Celestina’, to find out, and it is an eye-opener. What do we really know of the 1400s? We usually just get the stuff about the Kings, the Queens, the nobility, and The Church.

With ‘Don Quixote’, probably my favorite novel of all time, being the first best classic Spanish novel, I was willing to take my chances with second best. ‘La Celestina’ has been described as the second best classic Spanish novel. ‘La Celestina’ by Fernando de Rojas (1499) – 215 pages Translated from the Spanish by Peter BushĪs you may have surmised I do love novels, so I just had to read what is considered the first European novel ever written, ‘La Celestina’, and what a novel it is!

La celestina by fernando de rojas