Precincts of Contention: Urban Places and the Ideology of Space in Celestina

Abstract

Celestina is the first work of early Spanish literature to portray urban spaces in any concerted fashion.Through the complex manipulation of dialogue, descriptions of locations and settings are almost imperceptively embedded in the characters' speeches and become integral parts of the narrative fabric of the work, complements of what the characters do, say, and believe (on narrative inlaying see Lida de Malkiel 81-107).As Stephen Gilman notes in his masterful study of Celestina, the representation of material space is a decisive component of the work's verbal art.Toe dialogue takes the reader "a través de una estructura de acaeceres radicalmente espacial, sucediéndose en constante progresión cinematográfica: dentro, fuera, adelante, abajo, arriba, hacia atrás, a través de iglesias, escaleras arriba, al interior de los jardines ... , del comienzo al fin de la obra.Y cuando surgen obstáculos (muro, puertas, etc.), lo son en efecto para los deseos de los personajes y no simple decorado o mero juego de detalle escénico.Esta libertad espacial es la que, mejor que ningún otro rasgo, produce en nosotros esa ilusión engañosa de realidad identificable en la ficticia ciudad de La Celestina" (3 68).Several critics have pursued Gilman's astute observations.George Shipley, for one, has explored an essential irony of place in Celestina, showing how the spatial irnagery comprising Melibea's garden mimics the locus amoenus of the medieval arnatory tradition and how it is verbally and situationally undermined to produce in the reader "complex and tense reactions which can properly be called disconcerting" (287).This is accomplished through the violation of the artistic protocols of the

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