Women in the Prose of Maria de Zayas

Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor published two volumes of novellas, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares [1637] and Desenganos amorosos [1647], which enjoyed immense popularity in her day. She has recently been reinstated as a major figure of the Spanish Golden Age.

This study examines Zayas’s prose through a gynocentric lens. Drawing on an extensive array of primary and secondary sources, and referring to the ideas of Irigaray, Kristeva, Cixous,Raymond and Genette, O'Brien reflects on the interactions of Zayas’s women in such relationships as friendship, sisterhood, and motherhood, analyzing these interactions through the collections as a whole, and connecting the novellas with the frame stories, an aspect of Zayas’s writing which has often been overlooked by critics.

EAVAN O'BRIEN is a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Trinity College Dublin.