The late fifteenth-century Spanish masterpiece Celestina is one of the world's classics. In this important study, Dorothy Sherman Severin investigates how Fernando de Rojas' work in dialogue, which parodies earlier genres, is a precursor of the modern novel. In Celestina, the hero Calisto parodies the courtly lover, the heroine Melibea lives through classical examples and popular students' knowledge, the bawd and go-between Celestina deals a blow to the world of wisdom literature, and Melibea's father Pleberio gives his own gloss on the lament. There is also a fatal clash between two literary...