231
A number of critics (Gilman, 123; Spitzer, 'A New Book...', 8-9; Marcel Bataillon, 'Gaspar von Barth interprète de La Célestine', Revue de Littérature Comparée, xxxi (1957), 321-40) regard the sententiae in La Celestina as having an ironical function in themselves, as offering a running commentary on the behaviour of the characters. A case has certainly been made out for this, but it seems overstated: some of the sententiae and exempla have a part to play in irony, or dramatic irony, or both, and I have tried to illustrate this above. Nevertheless, many others seem to have a non-ironic function. If we remember that citation of sententiae and proverbs was a standard method of argument both in rhetoric and life in the fifteenth century, it appears more likely that for Rojas and his contemporary readers the majority of exempla and sententiae were taken as a matter of course.
232
See J. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (4th ed., London, 1930), ch. 3; M. Francon, 'Petrarch, Disciple of Heraclitus', Speculum, xi (1936), 265-71; G. Post, 'Petrarch and Heraclitus once more', ibid. xii (1937), 343-50 (most of this article deals with medieval knowledge of Heraclitus before Petrarch). It is doubtful whether Heraclitus's philosophy affected other parts of De Remediis as much as Françon suggests.
233
119
234
147-53. 'Sentiment' is used in a special and not always consistent sense in The Art of La Celestina. It is normally, however, opposed to 'passion'; Gilman, 140, explicitly rejects the view that 'love is a fatal passion to which [man] must submit'. Yet the behaviour (not just the words) of Calisto, Melibea, and, to a lesser extent, Pármeno make it clear that love is, for Rojas, precisely that kind of passion. Some of the implications of Gilman's use of 'sentiment' are discussed by Spitzer, 17-21.
235
'Time has joined alien space explicitly and as a full partner' (139). Gilman elaborates, but does not appreciably strengthen, this aspect of his case in 'The Fall of Fortune: from Allegory to Fiction', Filología Romanza, iv (1957), 337-54.
236
64.
237
Gilman's interpretation is, it should be remembered, largely self-consistent, since he tends to decide what La Celestina is about, to read this back into Petrarch, and to confirm his interpretation of La Celestina by the resulting demonstration of Petrarchan influence.
238
This is also the view of Benedetto Croce, Poesia antica e moderna (2ª ed., Bari, 1943), 209-22. Croce holds that Celestina's death is 'come ora si direbbe, infortunio sul lavoro'.
239
Gilman, 133,.
240
135. Petrarch himself had abandoned the allegorical concept of Fortune; see below.