Sex Acts in <i>La Celestina</i>: An <i>Ars Combinatoria</i> of Desire
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article investigates one of the most important and erotically explicit early modern Spanish texts: Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (1499/1507). Highlighting the dynamics of the three sex acts depicted in the plot, it argues that intercourse can be read as a negotiation of the text’s main values: (courtly) love, honour, and money. While scholars have elaborated on the metaphor of the wheel of fortune in La Celestina, this article suggests that the wheel was more than a trope for life’s vicissitudes; it operated as a structural tool in the text, a metaphor rendered material via Ramón Llull’s (ca. 1232–1315) ars combinatoria. Applying the Catalan philosopher’s mnemonic device demonstrates how the text’s values are transferred from men to women and thereby shift their semantics. While the resulting inversions must have amused contemporary audiences, they also reveal the tensions of a transforming society. Cet article examine un texte parmi les plus importants et explicites sur le plan érotique de l’Espagne des débuts de la modernité : La Celestina (1499/1507) de Fernando de Rojas. En mettant en lumière les trois actes sexuels prenant place dans l’intrigue, on avance que ces relations peuvent être interprétées comme une négociation des valeurs présentes dans le texte, à savoir, l’amour (courtois), l’honneur et l’argent. Alors que les spécialistes se sont penchés sur la métaphore dans La Celestina de la roue de fortune, cet article propose que cette roue représente bien davantage que les vicissitudes de la vie, puisqu’elle fonctionne dans le texte comme un élément structurant qui devient concret à l’aide de l’ars combinatoria de Ramón Llull (ca. 1232–1315). L’utilisation du dispositif mnémonique du philosophe catalan démontre comment les valeurs du texte sont transférées des hommes vers les femmes, transformant ainsi leur signification. Bien que ces inversions aient dû amuser le public, elles révèlent également des tensions propres à une société qui se transforme.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".