Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (1499) is said to be the first modern novel on the somewhat cavalier assumption that the narrative writings of the Greco-Roman and Alexandrian periods are mere tales. Still, it is permissible, since the sixteenth century is a watershed century, to view the work as the first modern novel, so to speak, certain noteworthy qualifications notwithstanding.

Ultimately divided into twenty-one acts, La Celestina underwent considerable changes during the early lifetime of its author, whose dates are 1475/6 to 1541. The anonymous first edition of 1499 was followed by a second in 1500, which added an acrostic poem spelling out Rojas’s name, as well as a prologue in the form of a letter stating that the lengthy first act, of uncertain authorship, was found by Rojas, who decided to continue it. He was, at the time, a law student in Salamanca. In 1502 he published a greatly expanded and revised version, which remains definitive. Sometime around 1507, he moved to Talavera de la Reina, where he practiced law for nearly forty years and was, for a time, the town’s mayor. He never published again. He came from a solid family of conversos (baptized Jews), it being the heyday of the Inquisition under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, when the auto-da-fé made it rather too hot for many Jews to keep the faith.

At twenty-one acts, La Celestinawas clearly not meant for the theater, although, especially in recent times, with multiple translations