Rewriting La Celestina from 19th to 21st Century: Peritext Strategies

Abstract

Among the different emulators generated by La Celestina throughout the contemporary era, stands out a series of fictitious works that do not attempt to modernize or imitate the late-medieval masterpiece, but rather divert its plot and characters. Besides constituting a Celestinian corpus that has not been much studied until nowadays, such rewritings – that include hypertexts as well as transfictions – thus show, in harmony with its authors’ literary projects, a sui generis reception of the Spanish classic. The present work untangles this reception from an exam of the different peritextual strategies carried out by 30 Spanish and Hispano-American rewritings of the Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea that were published from the 19^th to the beginning of 21^st Century. From Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch’s Comedia de magia to Luis García Jambrina’s historical thriller, through Joaquín Benito de Lucas’ collection of poems, the formal choices and cover themes, the subtitles, prologues, synopsis and epilogues tend to highlight the same rewriting procedure, its methods and objectives. In this way, the peritext’s analysis allows to better understand the functioning and hermeneutical implications of these peculiar Celestinian pieces.