The end of desire and the beginning of the bond with God: Contacts between La Celestina and fifteenth-century mystical literature from the perspective of psychoanalysis

Abstract

This article connects Fernando de Rojas' work with the Spanish mystic literature of the sixteenth century and recognizes in them a shared worldview concerning desire. In both visions, female actors take the center stage in the administration of desire and the immanence fragments the transcendent medieval scholastic order. Also, desire is negotiated in the private space and has a concrete effect on the participants' body. Finally, the administration of desire is carried to the ultimate consequences: silence, nothingness, and death. But while in Celestina, these elements have a negative charge, the mystics perceive them as something positive, the path to divinity.