"The late medieval masterpiece Celestina has long been the focus of controversy, over both its authorship and the apparent contradictions and inconsistencies within its plot. Scholars trace the publication of Celestina to 1499, when Fernando de Rojas supposedly discovered the first act and completed the remainder of the drama within a two week-period.

Scholars disagree about how to interpret the meeting of the two lovers in the first scene, when they share an unusual conversation that is incongruous with their comportment in the remainder of the work. Ricardo Castells seeks to resolve this and other seeming contradictions by tracing the oneiric, phantasmal, and melancholic traditions of the Renaissance and their effect on the composition of Celestina."--BOOK JACKET.