While chasing his falcon through the fields, a rich young bachelor named Calisto enters a garden where he meets Melibea, the daughter of the house, and is immediately taken with her. The name Celestina has become synonymous with "procuress" in Spanish, especially an older woman used to further an illicit affair, and is a literary archetype of this character, the masculine counterpart being Pandarus. When he dies in an accident, she commits suicide. Though the two use the rhetoric of courtly love, sex - not marriage - is their aim. The story tells of a bachelor, Calisto, who uses the old procuress and bawd Celestina to start an affair with Melibea, an unmarried girl kept in seclusion by her parents. Although usually regarded as a novel, it is written as a continuous series of dialogues and can be taken as a play, having been staged as such and filmed. The book is considered to be one of the greatest works of all Spanish literature, and is usually regarded as marking the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the renaissance in Spanish literature. It is attributed to Fernando de Rojas, a descendant of converted Jews, who practiced law and, later in life, served as an alderman of Talavera de la Reina, an important commercial center near Toledo. The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea ( Spanish: Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea), known in Spain as La Celestina is a work entirely in dialogue published in 1499.
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