Seneca and Celestina (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies)

This book examines the reason & intent behind the many Senecan & pseudo-Senecan quotations in Fernando de Rojas' masterpiece, Celestina (1949), which enjoyed enormous popularity in sixteenth-century Europe. The author considers the importance attached to Senecan thought in the oral, scholarly, & literary traditions of fifteenth-century Spain, & shows how readers, tastes & sensibilities were shaped by it. The main themes of Celestina, such as self-seeking friendship & love, pleasure & sorrow, benefices & riches, greed, suicide, & death, are demonstrated to be rooted in this intellectual background. The Senecan tradition is seen as underlying the later additions & interpolations to the text, with a shift toward Seneca's Tragedies in response to changes in fashion. Fothergill-Payne also reveals that even Celestina's petrarchan quotations have Senecan sources.Louise Fothergill-Payne is the author of 'Seneca and Celestina (Cambridge Iberian and Latin American Studies)', published 1988 under ISBN 9780521322126 and ISBN 052132212X.