Introduction

Arguably, Fernando de Rojas's Celestina (1499/1502) “invented” not only the modern novel and drama but also the modern sequel. While numerous Peninsular critics have asserted the former contribution to Western letters, none has asserted the latter. Yet it is the first claim that is the more tenuous and the second that is the more certain. Rojas's Celestina may have only offered the outlines of the modern novel and drama, but it definitely contained two fully formed types of literary continuation: allographic and autographic sequels. Continuing an anonymous one-auto work with fifteen autos of his own in 1499, Rojas defined how to continue a work begun by another's hand and did so with unprecedented brilliance. Adding five autos to the hybrid result in 1502, he then defined how to continue one's own work, and in so doing equaled and surpassed himself, a feat unrepeated until Cervantes' Part II of the Quijote.

Although the Celestina's maculate conception proved unprecedented in its influence, it did have an important precursor in the 1496 edition of the Cárcel de Amor, which bound Diego de San Pedro's 1492 primitive text to Nicolás Núñez's 1496 continuation. When the Cárcel de amor became the exemplary sentimental novel of its age it was in this combined form. Much has been made of Rojas's use of a scene from the first part of the Cárcel de amor in the Celestina.