The swan song: from Cancionero to La Celestina

Abstract

Animalistic imagery has a not insignificant presence in fifteenth-century Castilian Cancionero poetry, but the abundance of references to animals in La Celestina, by Fernando de Rojas, is particularly striking, as Joseph Snow has pointed out in a recent article (2021). The present study focuses on one animal in particular, the swan. After briefly outlining the history of the legend of the swan and its song before dying, we will focus on highlighting its presence in the Spanish Cancionero, and analyze its functionality in the texts and the ways in which poets appropriate the myth of the bird. From this analysis, and considering these uses as part of the literary context in which Rojas wrote the Tragicomedy, we will try to interpret the meaning of the swan in it and put it in relation with other animal metaphors and with the general hermeneutics of the work.