Joseph T. Snow

Why the Title Celestina? Why Not Melibea?

The importance and influence of a name is discussed, in the case of the title of a literary work, for its impact on the reception the work meets with, and the meanings it holds for readers. The his...

El fablar fermoso de Juan Ruiz , y sus ecos en La palabra dicha de Octavio Paz

Abstract En el sistema lingüístico compartido socialmente, los enunciados de los emisores, sean escritos, sean orales, están expuestos por similitudes fonéticas, la polisemia y distintos niveles de comprensión entre los receptores, a malentendidos. Se considera en esta comparación entre las obras de dos poetas y filósofos del lenguaje engañoso, Juan Ruiz y el Libro de buen amor (España, siglo XIV) y Octavio Paz (México, siglo XX), que el dilema de las imperfecciones en el sistema lingüístico compartido no es solo universal, sino que también es inherente en las palabras mismas. Juan Ruiz sentencia ‘no ha mala palabra si no es a mal tenida’ y Octavio Paz da muchos ejemplos de cómo el laberinto de la oreja puede interferir con las intenciones expresivas del emisor. Lo que un poeta observó hace seis siglos sigue siendo observable en el mundo comunicativo contemporáneo.

Celestina and the Ends of Desire by E. Michael Gerli (review)

This is an aptly titled monograph. It deals with the Spanish classic, Celestina, in a straightforward, unequivocal and almost driving manner. Its main objective is to plumb the depths of desire in all the possible varieties present in the work and in which the fuller understanding of how desire takes over the text can function as a hermeneutical tool for readers. The readers Gerli surely had in mind while composing Desire are, clearly, scholars and students of the work who know the text very well: these readers will profit greatly from this dense, well-written and cohesive study.

Love Lyric and Other Poems of the Croatian Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology (review)

241 Garulo, Teresa. La literatura árabe de alAndalus durante el siglo XI. Madrid: Hiperión, 1998. Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī, Abū al-H ̣asan ʿAlī. Al-Dhakhīra fī mah ̣āsin ahl aljazīra. Ed. Ih ̣sān ʿ Abbās. 4 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2000. Pérès, Henri. La poésie andalouse en arabe classique au XIe siècle, ses aspects généraux et sa valeur documentaire. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1937. ——. El esplendor de al-Andalus: La poesía andaluza en árabe clásico en el siglo XI, sus aspectos generales, sus principales temas y su valor documental. Trans. Mercedes García-Arenal. Madrid: Hiperión, 1990. Works Cited

CELESTINA EXAMINED: A VIEW FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

I was first brought into contact widi this curious, and contemporary, examination oí Celestina about 1968, when shown a microfilm of it by Lloyd Kasten, die long-term director of die Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies at the University of Wisconsin. I was a doctoral student, not dien deeply enmeshed -as I was later to becomein Celestina studies but, nonedieless, I was impressed with what even diis microfilm copy showed me of the rich possibilities for a fresh approach to the work. I was equally impressed widi the many difficulties the Celestina comentada would present to a reader lacking the special skills and training required to read even small units of a manuscript with such a complex mise en page.1 This Celestina comentada (CC), Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid MS 17631, the work of an unidentified erudite with a medieval cast of mind but endowed with a more modern, or Renaissance, approach to scholarship, was die first truly monumental commentary dedicated to a single work, the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, which, more than seventy years after it first circulated as a printed book, had been and continued to be the most reprinted work of sixteenth century Spanish literature. Subsequent publication of Spanish-language editions through 1633 within and outside die peninsula, as well as numerous translations and adaptations, especially in its first half-century (Snow