[1] La Celestina is usually regarded as marking the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the renaissance in Spanish literature.

[2] The story tells of a bachelor, Calisto, who uses the old procuress and bawd Celestina to start an affair with Melibea, an unmarried girl kept in seclusion by her parents.

The name Celestina[3] has become synonymous with "procuress" in Spanish, especially an older woman used to further an illicit affair, and is a literary archetype of this character, the masculine counterpart being Pandarus.

While chasing his falcon through the fields, a rich young bachelor named Calisto enters a garden where he meets Melibea, the daughter of the house, and is immediately taken with her.

As a seller of feminine knick-knacks and quack medicines, Celestina is permitted entrance into the home of Alisa and Melibea by pretending to sell thread.

But the crafty Celestina persuades her that Calisto has a horrible toothache that requires her aid, and manages to get the girdle off her and to fix another meeting.

When the weary Calisto returns home at dawn to sleep, his two servants go round to Celestina's house to get their share of the gold.

After jumping out of the window in an attempt to escape the Night Guard, Sempronio and Pármeno are caught and are beheaded later that day in the town square.

Areúsa and Elicia come up with a plan to punish Calisto and Melibea for being the cause of Celestina, Sempronio, and Pármeno's downfall.

After confessing to her father the recent events of her love affair and Calisto's death, Melibea jumps from the tower of the house and dies too.

The unification of all the territories of the Iberian Peninsula, except Portugal and the Kingdom of Navarre, under one king and one religion, Catholic Christianity, took place in this period.

Claudio Sánchez Albornoz highlighted the importance of being Christian in a society that has warned against members of other religions, such as Jews and Muslims, and even came to outright rejection.

Although most scholars admit that an earlier version by an unknown author already existed, the first known edition is credited to be the Comedy published in Burgos by printer Fadrique de Basilea in 1499.

In 1631, an English translation by James Mabbe, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, was published under the title The Spanish Bawd.

[5] Rojas makes a powerful impression with his characters, who appear before the reader full of life and psychological depth; they are human beings with an exceptional indirect characterization, which moves away from the usual archetypes of medieval literature.

The literary critic Stephen Gilman[6] has come to deny the possibility of analyzing them as characters, based on the belief that Rojas limited dialogue in which interlocutors respond to a given situation, so that the sociological depth can thus be argued only on extratextual elements.

The theme of greed is explained by Francisco José Herrera in an article about envy in La Celestina and related literature (meaning imitations, continuations, etc.

In this sense, the character of the rascal Centurio added in the second version is an addition with little function, although he has something to do with the disorder that calls the attention of Calisto and causes his death.

Her character is inspired by the meddling characters of the comedies of Plautus and in works of the Middle Ages such as the Libro de Buen Amor (The Book of Good Love) by Juan Ruiz and Italian works like The Tale of Two Lovers by Enea Silvio Piccolomini and Elegía de madonna Fiammeta by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Melibea is a strong-willed girl, in whom repression appears as forced and unnatural; she feels like a slave to the hypocrisy that has existed in her house since her childhood.

It is for this reason that after Sempronio and Pármeno kill Celestina she plots Calisto's death as revenge (and succeeds several months later).

It is for this reason that after Sempronio and Pármeno kill Celestina she plots Calisto's death as revenge (and succeeds several months later).