Los refranes de Celestina interpretados por su primer comentarista

Abstract

The compendium known as Celestina comentada has been analyzed on several occasions with the notion of understanding this rather special form of the reception of Celestina. Specifically of interest has been its nexus with a legal mindset, for it has been proposed that it was carried out by a lawyer versed in the mos gallicus so much in fashion in the mind sixteenth century. In this study, I examine a different aspect of the work: the author’s conception of the Spanish language. Thus, I emphasize the author’s relationships to the studia humanitatis from with so many of the characteristics of his comentary derive: the explanations of turns of phrase, the recourse to etymologies, the comparisons of the common language to the latin language and the treatment of the work as alrady a classic, among other characteristics. I propose that the commentary differs little from the interpretation of proverbial expressions realized in such works as the anonymous Seniloquium or the Philosophía vulgar of Juan de Mal Lara. Its ascription, then, to the studia humanitatis, is not to be doubted.