Spectatorship, Dead Bodies, and Medical Discourses in <i>Celestina</i>

Abstract

This article examines the intersection of spectatorship, literary imagination, and medical discourse as they converge in Celestina. The representation of dead bodies in this text projects Rojas’ work into early modernity as a literary forerunner of the anatomical discourse that scrutinizes the interior of the body and which would not emerge in the Iberian Peninsula until the 1540s. Drawing on Visual Studies, Body Studies, and Literary Studies, the present essay interrogates the notion of the gaze and the representation of cadavers in Celestina as a transgressive narrative that in 1499 tests the boundaries between real and metaphorical anatomies. From this perspective, Rojas’ literary imagination vis à vis the shift from a medieval to a pre-modern medical gaze inform a post-medieval understanding of the concept of the dead body at the dawn of modernity in Iberia.

Keywords

• cadavers
• gaze
• medicine
• modernity
• spectatorship