Return to the index of "Other Women's Voices."
Updated 03-20-12
Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor (1590?-aft.1647)
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"...BECAUSE THERE'S NO ONE ELSE WHO DOES DEFEND WOMEN."
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We know that Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor was active in the literary circles of Madrid in the 1620s and 1630s, and that during that period she wrote poetry which was praised by Lope de Vega and others. We know that she wrote at least one play, probably between 1628 and 1632, and that she published two collections of novelas, one in 1637 and the other in 1647.
Beyond that, nothing is certain. Zayas was probably born in 1590 to a military officer who was later knighted; she may have lived with him in Naples in the 1610s. Although most of her adult life was spent in Madrid (we know she was a resident there in 1617), she may have lived for a while in Zaragoza and/or in Barcelona. She may have lived until the 1660s, but nothing certain is known of her after 1647.
Zayas' verse play, La tracion en la amistad (Friendship betrayed) circulated in manuscript in Madrid, but there is no evidence that it was staged or printed. Fame came for her in 1637 with the publication of the prose work Novelas amorosas y ejemplares (Amorous and exemplary novels). Cervantes had written his Novelas ejemplares is 1613 and the form had become popular in Spain. Zayas arranged her book as a collection of ten short stories narrated by a group of men and women at three evening parties.
Novelas amorosas went through at least three printings: according to Zayas in 1647, "Everyone rushed out to buy it and they're still buying it." So Zayas published a sequel: Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimientos honestos (Second part of the entertaining and honest soiree); in modern editions it is usually titled Desenganos amorosos (Love undeceived).
In La tracion en la amistad a woman deceives both men and women. In the two collections of novelas, it is men who deceive, while women need to be undeceived; this Zayas will do with her tales. However, the tone of the novelas changes between 1637 and 1647: in the earlier collection, women somehow learn to cope; in the later work, they are frequently destroyed and always disillusioned about the lasting value of the love of men.
Yet even in the second collection, Zayas' goal appears to be reform, not mere condemnation. The book's central character identifies men's low regard for women as responsible for Spain's problems during the period --- defeat abroad and political disturbance at home --- and proposes a change in men's treatment of women, a change that would return the nation to its former glory.
On this page you'll find:
Links to helpful sites online.
Excerpts from translations in print:
La tracion en la amistad
Novelas amorosas y ejemplares
Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimientos honestos (Desenganos amorosos)
Information about:
A selection.
Secondary sources.
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1. In English:
(a) H. Patsy Boyer's 1990 The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels, a translation of Zayas' Novelas amorosas y ejemplares; here you may go to Zayas' preface, "To the reader," and to the individual novelas. Boyer's introduction and essay on the historical background are valuable (for excerpts from the translation, see below, under "In print").
(b) A link to the text (or to a PDF file) of the second volume of a three-volume collection, The Spanish Novelists, a Series of Tales, from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (1832), by Thomas Roscoe; there, at the end (pp. 303-40) is Roscoe's translation of "El castigo de la miseria" from Novelas amorosas, "The Miser Chastised." The introduction to the tale describes it as "perhaps the only one of her novels in which the writer wholly adopts a comic tone and spirit, without any touches of a more sentimental kind."
(c) Two excerpts from Friendship Betrayed, Catherine Larson's translation of La tracion en la amistad; you can link to an "overview" with a synopsis and a list of editions and studies through 2010 (for more on Larson's translation, see # 4, below).
2. In Spanish:
(a) Zayas' play, La tracion en la amistad; at the end of each section, you may link to the next.
(b) A link to the text of a 1764 edition, Novelas exemplares, y amorosas (note phrasing), which contains the 20 tales of both Novelas amorosas and Desenganos amorosos, although not Zayas' prefatory material.
(c) Links to seven tales. From Novelas amorosas: "Aventurarse perdiendo," "El castigo de la miseria," "La fuerza del amor," "El jardin enganoso," and La inocencia castigada"; and from Desenganos amorosos:"La esclava de su amante," and "Estragos que causa el vicio."
(d) Near the bottom of the page, links to seven poems by Zayas.
3. Essays, etc.:
(a) A biographical /critical introduction to Zayas, from the 2004 Literary Criticism (1400-1800).
(b) Two by Margaret Greer: "The Said and the Unsaid" (2002), which describes new areas of Zayas' criticism that arose after the publication of Greer's 2000 study, Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men (for more on that book, see # 5 below); and "Who's Telling This Tale Anyhow?" (1997), on the history of the framing of tales and its use by Zayas.
(c) "Female Communities, Female Friendships and Social Control in Maria de Zayas's La traicion en la amistad: A Historical Perspective" (1998), by Laura Gorfkle, analyses the role of the women characters in resolving the play's conflicts.
(d) "(En)gendering Fenisa in Maria de Zayas's La traicion en la amistad" (1998), by Gwyn E. Campbell, sees the character Fenisa as the play's protagonist, representing both feminine and masculine characteristics.
(e) "Socially Constructed, Essentially Other: Servants and Slaves in Maria de Zayas' Desenganos amorosos" (1998), by Deanna Mihaly, sees Zayas' defense of women compromised by her acceptance of class distinctions
(f) "Engendering Interpretation: Irony as Comic Challenge in Maria de Zayas" (1991), by Amy R. Williamson, a textual analysis of some of the tales in Novelas amorosas and Desenganos amorosos.
(g) "The 'Other' Woman in Cervantes's Persiles and Zayas's Novelas" (1990), by Boyer, looks at an incident in Miguel de Cervantes' last novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, to compare the two writers; Boyer sees Zayas' using a frame narrative to illustrate women's need to control their own lives.
(h) A link to the text of Lena E. V. Sylvania's 1922 Dona Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor: A Contribution to the Study of Her Works, which after a general introduction, looks at Zayas' use of her sources in two of the novelas of Novelas amorosas y ejemplares: "El jardin enganoso" and "El castigo de la miseria"; passages are given in Sylvania's translation with the original in the notes.
(i) An abstract of a 2008 master's thesis by Matthew Stuckwisch, "Maria de Zayas: Egalitarian Poetic Justice in the Spanish Golden Age"; you can download the whole thesis as a PDF file. Stuckwisch sees Zayas treating not only violence against women, but also the fact of marginalization by class, race, etc.
(j) An abstract of a 2004 master's thesis by Joshua Ferrer, "The Community of Women in Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor's La traicion en la amistad"; you can download the whole thesis as a PDF file.
(k) An English-language review by Elizabeth Rhodes of a 2005 study of Novelas amorosas and Desenganos amorosos by Pilar Alcal, Estrategias tematicas y narrativas en la novela feminizada en Maria de Zayas (for information on a 2011 study by Rhodes, see "Secondary sources").
4. Other reviews (for excerpts from the translation, see "In print"; for information on the other books' treatment of Zayas, see "Secondary sources"):
(a) Marina S. Brownlee on the 1999 edition /translation by Valerie Hegstrom and Catherine Larson, La traicion en la amistad = Friendship Betrayed.
(b) Alison Weber on Brownlee's 2000 study, The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria de Zayas.
(c) Judith Drinkwater on Greer's 2000 study, Maria de Zayas Tells Baroque Tales of Love and the Cruelty of Men (accompanied by a review of a 2000 edition of Novelas amorosas y ejemplares).
(d) Edward H. Friedman on the 1995 essay collection, Maria de Zayas: The Dynamics of Discourse.
(e) Kirsten Schultz on the 2011 collection, Women's Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World.
(f) Natasha Simonova on David R. Castillo's 2010 study, Baroque Horrors: Roots of the Fantastic in the Age of Curiosities.
(g) Anne J. Cruz on the 2003 collection, Women in the Discourse of Early Modern Spain.
(h) Drinkwater on Teresa Scott Soufas' 1997 study, Dramas of Distinction: A Study of Plays by Golden Age Women.
5. A 2006 bibliography of secondary sources.
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[Catherine Larson has made a prose translation of Valerie Hegstrom's edition of Zayas' verse play La traicion en la amistad. The original Spanish and the translation are given on facing pages. The introduction by Hegstrom and Larson discusses the play and sums up recent criticism. The notes are helpful, and the bibliography includes earlier studies of the novelas as well as of the play. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. La traicion en la amistad; edition
and notes by Valerie Hegstrom = Friendship betrayed / translation
by Catherine Larson. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London:
Associated University Presses, c1999. (197 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 T73 1998; ISBN: 0838753442
Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-34).
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"Love and friendship are fighting it out."
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[In this play about young lovers in Madrid, perhaps the most interesting role is that of the troublemaker, Fenisa. Zayas creates a female character who does what Tirso de Molina's Don Juan had done: acquire and enjoy a string of lovers with little concern for anyone else's feelings. At the start of Act 1, when she is shown a picture of Liseo, her friend Marcia's lover, Fenisa has a brief debate with herself:]
Fenisa (aside): Oh, Lord, what have I seen? What do you see, my soul, what do you see? Is this love or a magic spell?!
Hold on just a minute, mad fantasy; this is a horrid machination or a dream! Marcia and I are friends; I would be better off dead, oh, Love---why do you ask me to follow you?
But oh, what bewitching eyes he has! [p.43]
[And when Marcia has left the stage:]
Fenisa: Could I be more unlucky? Am I her friend? Yes, so how could I be such a traitor to my girlfriend? Love, get out of the way; you are standing between us.
Lord---my soul is on fire. Self-control, where are you headed? Away from Marcia and after Liseo, that's where! Don't you see that you have gone astray?
Love and friendship are fighting it out; friendship is defeated and love emerges victorious.
Oh Cupid, you blind god, please let me win my own dubious victory. [pp.45-47]
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" Sorry, Friendship, but Love has my fancy held hostage."
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[Fenisa is soon quite at peace with the betrayal of her friend. When she is with Don Juan, her own lover, she tell the audience:]
Fenisa (aside): Although I adore Don Juan, I also love Liseo, because there is plenty of room in my heart for me to love every man I see. Sorry, Friendship, but Love has my fancy held hostage, and reason and understanding can't do a thing about it. [p.61]
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"Let them be called the great Fenisa's commandments."
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[By the middle of Act 2, Fenisa has most of the men in love with her, although none knows about the others:]
Fenisa (alone):
...Everyone praises my ability to make men fall in love with me, an opinion that I happen to share.
(To the audience:)
Men, this is how I get even with you and your tricks.
Lord, keep us from these foolish girls who do not know how to enjoy themselves the way I do, even though they may not take their faithfulness too seriously. If a lover is absent, angry, or dead, you do not have to leave your affections in a wasteland; idleness is a sociable thing. Cursed be the woman who loves only one man, because it is cowardly to limit yourself to a single lover. Nature is vain and beautiful. [p.119]
[And later in the scene:]
Love, where will such a mad deception end? Ten men adore me, and as for each of them, I adore them back, I love them, I admire them, and they all fit inside my heart and soul, although Liseo does reign as king among them. From this day forward, let them be called the great Fenisa's commandments, so well kept that none of them is broken by sin, since she loves and adore them all. [p.123]
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"Fenisa is left alone without a single lover."
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[By the end of the play, of course, all the men return to their proper attachments, and Fenisa becomes the stock figure of comic villainy:]
Fenisa: You have all been ungrateful with my favors and breeding. Justice, heavens, let justice rain down on this house!
Marcia: Fenisa, your curses mean nothing, since no one deserves the blame for what has happened except you. Disloyal friends play those kinds of tricks! You have only seen a few examples of the punishment that awaits you; console yourself and be patient. [p.195]
[Fenisa's worst punishment is shown in the words of Liseo's servant that end the play:]
Leon (to the men in the audience): My lords, as you can see, Fenisa is left alone without a single lover. If one of you is interested, let me know and I will pass on her address. [p.197]
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[The print version of H. Patsy Boyer's translation of Novelas amorosas y ejemplares that is available online. Boyer's introduction discusses the content and style of both of the prose works, and the "Historical Background" section includes a bibliography:]
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. The enchantments of love: amorous
and exemplary novels; translated from the Spanish by H. Patsy
Boyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990. (xl,
312 p.)
LC#: PQ6498 .Z5 N6813 1990; ISBN: 0520066715
Includes bibliographical references
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"Publication is the crucible...."
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[You may see the context of each of these brief passages online.
First, the opening of "To the reader":]
Oh my reader, no doubt it will amaze you that a woman has the nerve, not only to write a book but actually to publish it, for publication is the crucible in which the purity of genius is tested; until writing is set in letters of lead, it has no real value. Our senses are so easily deceived that fragile sight often sees as pure gold what, by the light of the fire, is simply a piece of polished brass. [p.1]
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"...a plain style and everyday language."
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[Zayas defends both her her subject matter and her style. In "To the reader" she speaks of her subject:]
Books that aren't erudite can be good if they have a good subject, while many works filled with subtlety are offered for sale but never bought because the subject is unimportant or not pleasing. [p.2]
[And at the end of "Just Deserts," one of the narrators describes the style of all of the speakers, distinguishing it from the more elaborate Baroque style popular at the time:]
...[A]ll the stories told... on these delightful evenings have been narrated in a plain style and everyday language, avoiding exaggeration, leaving such adornments to those who wish to be considered "artistic." [p.240]
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"...intelligence leads women to fall into a thousand errors."
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[In the tales, told alternately by men and women, men often deceive, but women either are avenged or at least end up with a loyal suitor. The tone is frequently light. One of the tales, "Forewarned But Not Forearmed," tells of a wealthy man who marries Gracia solely because she is too ignorant to betray him. (By the end of the story, that ignorance will lead to his dishonor, but he will accept his lesson and the couple will live on more-or-less happily):]
Gracia accepted this good fortune placidly, like one who knows neither pleasure or displeasure, good or evil. She was naturally stupid, the only flaw in her beauty, although it was precisely the flaw her husband required....
He wanted his wife to live in her own house and not with his aunt, for he didn't want her primitive intelligence to develop. Given his obsessive belief that intelligence leads women to fall into a thousand errors, he hired all her maids with great care, selecting the least cunning and the most ignorant. [p.148]
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"In the second part we shall see...."
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[At the very end of the last section,"The Magic Garden," the author promises more (although in fact the "second part" delivered ten years later, would take the story in a quite different direction):]
This ended the fifth and final night, and I end my well-intentioned and entertaining soiree, promising a second part if this one is received with the pleasure I hope. In the second part we shall see... Lysis's wedding.
I hope my work is appreciated, valued, and praised, not my rough style but the will with which it has been written. [p.312]
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Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimientos
honestos (Desenganos amorosos)
[Boyer has also translated Parte segunda del sarao y entretenimientos honestos, (Desenganos amorosos). Boyer's introduction gives a detailed analyses of each tale. There are no notes; the bibliography of earlier secondary sources is thorough. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. The disenchantments of love;
a translation of the Desenganos amorosos by H. Patsy Boyer
(SUNY series, women writers in translation). Albany: State University
of New York Press, c1997. (ix, 405 p.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 P3713 1997; ISBN: 0791432815, 0791432823
Includes bibliographical references
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"If a few people criticized it, a hundred applauded it."
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[Some of the most interesting passages of the later book are in the framing narrative, the comments by the narrator and by the individual story tellers which precede and follow the tales. Two passages deal with the reception of the first book ten years before; first, on the originality of the tales told here:]
Certainly they've not simply been taken from any old source as some invidious critics stated about the first part of our entertaining soirees. [p.113]
[And on the difficulty involved in telling the truth in a way people will want to read:]
What a challenge it is for the mind, and the person who understands how hard it is will appreciate it while the one who doesn't is excused by his ignorance. This is what happened with the first part of our soiree. If a few people criticized it, a hundred applauded it. Everyone rushed out to buy it and they're still buying it. It's already been through three printings, two legitimate and one pirated.
Well-intentioned readers are like bees who know how to make the sweetest honey from odorless and tasteless wild flowers. Ill-intentioned readers are like the dung-beetle that turns fragrant flowers into excrement. [p.168]
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"...they should be called "disenchantments."
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[A year after the action of the first book, Lisis' health had improved, and, with her mother's permission, she decided to have another set of "soirees." But the arrangements this time would be different:]
This how things were arranged: first, only ladies were to tell stories (this accorded with the men's belief that women had always been story-tellers); second, the stories they told should be true cases, and they should be called "disenchantments" (in this I'm not sure she pleased the men; since men are always trying to deceive women, they don't want women to be undeceived).
Lisis's intention in this was to defend women's good name (so denigrated and defamed by men's bad opinion that there is scarcely anyone who speaks well of them). [p.37]
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"She's only doing her job."
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[Most of the women who tell tales defend the proposition that all women are chaste by simply excluding those who aren't --- they are not women but "wild beasts." However, one speaker, Nise, takes a broader view. Addressing men, she says:]
As for women of free habits, what do you expect of them except exactly what you're seeking, which is for you to have a good time and for her to take away your money? That's why she does it. Since you already know that, how can you blame the woman for earning her living at your expense and then complain that she deceives you? You deceive yourselves.... She's only doing her job. [pp.114-15]
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"It would be even better for women to profess in letters."
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[Another speaker, Filis, looks for the reasons for men's denigration of women:]
Besides, men enjoy all the powers nature has endowed on them as men and they may well fear that women will take some of their power away.
There can be no doubt that if women didn't devote themselves to their appearance, making themselves more feminine than nature intended, and if, instead of studying how to arrange their hair and make up their faces, they applied themselves to learning and to art of bearing arms, it might well be that they would excel men in every way. The accusation that women are weak, lacking in valor, and generally worthless is to prevent them from rising up against men's authority....
It would be a good thing for women to use swords, then they would never suffer affront from any man. It would be even better for women to profess in letters, for then they would cost men fewer doubts and more jobs.... [p.140]
[Filis sees this deprivation to which women are subjected as a kind of castration:]
I don't think I'm off track to say that out of fear and invidiousness men deprive women of the exercise of both letters and arms, the same way that Moors do to Christians who serve among their women, turning them into eunuchs to be sure of them. [p.141]
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"They've had to research the most extreme cases...."
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[Zayas realized the effect of her stories' use of the sensational --- rape, dismemberment, putrefaction --- and defended it. Of the many listeners who came on the second night, the narrator says:]
But most of all they came to enjoy the novelty, I don't know with what relish, for they'd been warned that the disenchantresses, armed with all kinds of comparisons and portentous examples, had declared war on men because men live lives exempt from the law; they don't even acknowledge the laws that aren't to their liking. [p.167]
[And in the words of another woman character:]
...[I]f men wrote about how men really are they would have saved these ladies the trouble they've taken to vindicate women's honor and come to their defense because there's no one else who does defend women. They've had to research the most extreme cases to prove that not all women are evil nor are all men good. [p.199]
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"...although tragic, are appealing because they are true."
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[By the beginning of the third and last night, the "disenchantments" were having effect on the listeners --- both the men and the women:]
It doesn't take much to disabuse the wise of error; this is precisely how they differ from the foolish. The gentlemen realized that the ladies were blaming them only for the vice of deceiving women and them speaking ill of them, and of refusing to acknowledge that there are good, chaste, and virtuous women... [T]hese gentlemen... have become addicted to our disenchantments which, although tragic, are appealing because they are true....
Those women most careless of their decorum and modesty were learning to protect themselves from men's deceptions so as not to find themselves put down and affronted by men's talk and conversation. [pp.305-307]
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"If it's good, it will speak for itself and stand on its
merit."
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[As Lisis prepares to tell the final tale, she defends her (and Zayas') non-heroic style and tells her hopes for the book's future:]
...I've sought to speak the idiom my nature dictates to me, which I learned from my parents. Anything else is sophistry writers adopt to distinguish themselves from ordinary people. They sometimes say things even they themselves can't understand, so how can others understand them? Then people say, as I have sometimes said myself when I try to figure out the meaning and find my efforts fruitless, I'll say, "It must be awfully good because I can't understand it."...
Of course, being noble and discreet as you are, my wish is for you to praise my work.... Since I take nothing away from you and indeed, I give, what reason can their be for my poor labor to find no place among the great wealth of your heroic discourse?...
As I've said, if it doesn't merit your courtesy and even if it's bad, someone will publish it and people will buy it, if only to speak ill of it. If it's good, it will speak for itself and stand on its merit. If you think it's silly, still you can't deny that they [the tales] are well worked, especially considering that I'm unaided by art but rely only on the talent heaven gave me. [pp.367-69]
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"You will see how your lost valor returns."
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[In her final speech after telling her tale, Lisis identifies the source of Spain's waning international power, illustrated by French invasion and Turkish threats. To her male listeners:]
Where do you think the lack of courage you all exhibit nowadays comes from? That lets you tolerate the enemy within Spanish borders.... It comes from your low regard for women.
I swear if you did love and cherish women as was the way in former times, you'd volunteer not just to go to war and fight but to die, exposing your throat to the knife to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. This is the way it was in earlier days....Men used to offer up their possessions and their lives.... They did so to keep their women from being captures, taken prisoner or, worst of all, being dishonored. I feel sure this is what will come to pass if you men don't gather the courage to defend women....
How can you sit back and see us almost in the power of the enemy?... So this is Spanish valor! How can the Castilian spirit tolerate this?... Respect and honor women and you will see how your lost valor returns. [pp.400-401]
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"I don't know how to recognize a good man."
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[Already on the second night, Lisis had expressed her own personal disenchantment:]
Oh, gentlemen! I don't mean that you're all evil, but I don't know how to recognize a good man. [p.238]
[By the end of the third night, she had determined to reject don Diego and go to live at a convent --- although not to become a nun. Explaining herself, she summed up what she has learned from the suffering of the women in each the ten tales:]
...[I]t isn't right for me to trust in my good fortune. I feel no more loyal that the beautiful dona Isabel, whose many trials did her no good.... I think about Camilla, whose virtue did not suffice to save her from misfortune.... Rosaletta...couldn't avert her punishment. Elena suffered in innocence and died a tortured death. It did not excuse dona Ines to be deprived of her reason...; nor was Laurela exonerated for being raped by a traitor. Her virtue and her purity did not help dona Blanca, nor did dona Mencia's blameless love. Dona Ana's innocence... did not keep her from losing her life only because she was poor. Beatriz required all the favor of the Mother of God to save her life... and not all of us merit this. It did dona Magdalena no good to be chaste and virtuous....
I am such a coward that, like a person who's committed a crime, I shall take refuge in sanctuary. I plan to retire to a convent, from where, as from behind a safety barricade, I intend to observe what happens to everybody else. [pp.402-403]
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"She did not subject herself to anyone."
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[Zayas concludes the book with a note to a reader, "illustrious Fabio," who had asked that the story not have a tragic end:]
This end is not tragic but rather the happiest one you can imagine for, although courted and desired by many, she [Lisis] did not subject herself to anyone. [p.405]
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[Margaret R. Greer and Elizabeth Rhodes have translated the two prefaces and four tales of Novelas amorosas, and three tales from Desenganos amorosos; included are the first and last tales of each volume (with the relevant framing material), and three other tales, representing various types of narrators. The book' s introduction provides historical and literary background, discusses the organization of Zayas' collections, and describes her later critical reception. Notes are detailed, and the bibliography is complete through 2006. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de. Exemplary tales of love; and,
Tales of disillusion / edited and translated by Margaret R. Greer
and Elizabeth Rhodes (The other voice in early modern Europe).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, c2009. (xxvii, 364
p.: ill)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 A2 2008; ISBN: 9780226768649, 9780226768656
Includes bibliographical references and index
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Secondary sources
[In Rhodes' study of Desenganos amorosos, Zayas is seen
presenting an account, not of women versus men, but of the nobility
of both sexes versus the "disintegration of the world as
she wanted it to be" (p. 175). Rhodes provides detailed
information about Spain in the 1600s and comments on earlier
studies of Zayas (both English and Spanish). She gives her translation,
and ther original, of all passages from the work. One caution:
because Rhodes' text does not use the titles of the individual
tales, you may want to look at the "plot summaries"
given at the end. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Rhodes, Elizabeth. Dressed to kill: death and meaning in Zayas's
Desenganos. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, c2011. (xii,
234 p.: ill., ports.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 P372 2011; ISBN: 9781442643505
Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-224) and index
--------------------
[Eavan O'Brien's study of Novelas amorosas and Desenganos
amorosos focuses on what the tales (and the framing narratives)
reveal about relationships among women; quoted passages are not
translated but their meanings are usually made clear in the discussion.
Appendices list inter-relationships in all of the tales. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
O'Brien, Eavan. Women in the prose of Maria de Zayas (Coleccion
Tamesis. Serie A, Monografias; 289). Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK;
Rochester, NY: Tamesis, 2010. (x, 282 p.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 Z785 2010; ISBN: 9781855662223
Includes bibliographical references (p. [249]-276) and index.
Text in English with quoted passages in Spanish
-------------------
[Lisa Vollendorf's study of the two collections of tales discusses
gender relations, sexuality, and violence in the individual tales.
Vollendorf treats the two works, published ten years apart, as
a "unified collection" (p.25) but does point out differences
between them. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Vollendorf, Lisa. Reclaiming the body: Maria de Zayas's early
modern feminism (North Carolina studies in the Romance languages
and literatures; no. 270). Chapel Hill: U.N.C. Dept. of Romance
Languages: Distributed by Oxford University Press, 2001. (232
p.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 Z967 2001; ISBN: 0807892742
Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-228) and index
--------------------
[Marina S. Brownlee also presents the 1637 and 1647 collections as one "two-part work." The study's focus is on what the tales reveal of the effects of social institutions on private individuals. Brownlee discusses 15 of the 20 tales, gives the original and her translation of quoted passages, and usefully sums up earlier Spanish-language criticism on the works. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Brownlee, Marina S. The cultural labyrinth of Maria de Zayas.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. (xvi, 214
p.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z5 N6833 2000; ISBN: 0812235371
Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-209) and index
----------------------
[Greer's 2000 study is a thematic study based on psychoanalytic theory, focusing on what the tales say about motherhood and gender definition and comparing Zayas' tales to those written by male contemporaries and predecessors. Greer gives both the Spanish and her translation of cited passages. Appendices give plot summaries of the 20 tales and a chart analyzing relationships among characters. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Greer, Margaret Rich. Maria de Zayas tells baroque tales of
love and the cruelty of men (Penn State studies in Romance literatures).
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, c2000.
(xii, 468 p.: ill.)
LC#:PQ6498.Z5 Z8 G74 2000; ISBN:0271019875
Includes bibliographical references (p. [449]-462) and index
-------------------
[This collection of essays on Zayas includes three useful
for the general reader: (1) Mary Elizabeth Perry's "Crisis
and Disorder in the World of Maria de Zayas de Sotomayor,"
which describes the historical background; (2) Susan Paun de
Garcia's "Zayas as Writer: Hell Hath No Fury," which
focuses on the various narrative voices of the two prose works;
and (3) Matthew D. Stroud's "The Demand for Love and the
Mediation of Desire in La tracion en la amistad,"
which discusses the play and which give many passage in both
the original and in translation. The book's bibliography includes
English-language studies through 1994. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Maria de Zayas: the dynamics of discourse / edited by Amy
R. Williamsen and Judith A. Whitenack. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press; London; Cranbury, NJ: Associated University
Presses, c1995. (v, 257 p.)
LC#: PQ6498.Z47 Z77 1995; ISBN: 0838635725
Includes bibliographical references and index
-------------------
[This collection contains Yolanda Gamboa-Tusquets' essay, "Maria de Zayas, or Memory Chains and the Education of a Learned Woman," which considers Zayas' participation in the literary academies of Barcelona and Madrid and their influence on her treatment of women (the "memory chains" of the essay's title). (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Women's literacy in early modern Spain and the new world /
edited by Anne J. Cruz and Rosilie Hernandez (Women and gender
in the early modern world). Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, c2011 (xii, 274 p.: ill.)
LC#: Z1039.W65 W65 2011; ISBN: 9781409427131
Includes bibliographical references and index
--------------------
[One of the chapters in David R. Castillo's study is on Desenganos amorosos; Castillo discusses those tales in which women are made to suffer extreme violence and what that violence may reveal of Zayas' purpose. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Castillo, David R. Baroque horrors: roots of the fantastic
in the age of curiosities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, c2010.
LC#: PQ6066 .C365 2010; ISBN: 9780472117215
Includes bibliographical references and index
-------
[This collection contains three essays on the staging in the U.S .of Friendship Betrayed, Catherine Larson's 1999 translation of La tracion en la amistad (see above, under "In print"): in one, Larson re-evaluates her translation in the light of David Pasto's 2003 staging of her version; in another, Sharon D. Voros discusses Pasto's production, focusing on the effects of the stage action; in a third, Barbara Mujica looks at how Karen Berman produced the play in 2006. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
The Comedia in English: translation and performance / edited
by Susan Paun de Garcia and Donald R. Larson (Coleccion Tamesis.
Serie A, Monografias; 261) .Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: Tamesis,
2008. (xviii, 295 p.)
LC#: PQ6105 .C45 2008; ISBN: 9781855661691
Includes bibliographical references (p. [255]-276) and index
--------------------
[Three essays on Zayas can be found in this collection: (1)
Deborah Compte's "A Cry in the Wilderness: Pastoral Female
Discourse in Maria de Zayas" uses the opening of Novelas
amorosas y ejemplares and its first tale, "Aventurarse
perdiendo" to illustrate Zayas' reversal of the traditional
pastoral theme of male desire and loss; (2) Susan Paun de Garcia's
"Zayas's Ideal of the Masculine: Clothes Make the Man"
discusses Desenganos amorosos' criticism of men's refusal
to fight for their country, a refusal manifested in effeminate
clothing; (3) In Lisa Vollendorf's "Desire Unbound: Women's
Theater of Spain's Golden Age," La tracion en la amistad
is briefly treated (pp.277-82) as a response to the Don Juan
myth, not only through the character of Fenisa, but through the
play's other women as well. (See
the book's table of contents online.):]
Women in the discourse of early modern Spain / edited by Joan
F. Cammarata. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, c2003.
(303 p.)
LC#: PQ6066 .W56 2003; ISBN: 0813025788
Includes bibliographical references and index
-------------------
[This collection includes Lisa Voigt's essay, "Visual and Oral Art(ifice) in Maria de Zayas's Desenganos amorosos," which describes the women characters' ability to deceive as well as to be deceived, using as illustration two of the tales and the introduction to the first tale. Voigt also looks briefly as the parallels between women characters in Desenganos and the artist Judith Leyster's 1633 self-portrait. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Writing for the eyes in the Spanish Golden Age / edited by
Frederick A. de Armas. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
c2004. (310 p.: ill.)
LC#: PQ6064 .W75 2004; ISBN: 0838755712
Includes bibliographical references and index
------------------
[Teresa Scott Soufas' study includes discussion of La traicion en la amistad against the background of other women dramatists of 1600s Spain. Soufas does not translate the passages quoted, but the context generally makes them clear. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Soufas, Teresa Scott. Dramas of distinction: a study of plays
by Golden Age women (Studies in Romance languages: 42). Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, c1997. (201 p).
LC#: PQ6055 .S58 1997; ISBN: 0813120101
Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-196) and index
-------------------
[Barbara Simerka's article looks at Desenganos amorosos (especially its framing narrative) and at the Kagero nikki of Michitsuna no haha. Simerka sees the two writers presenting realistic views of women's experiences as opposed to the idealized portrayals of their comtemporaries. (See the issue's table of contents online.):]
Simerka, Barbara. Feminist Epistemology and Pre-modern Patriarchy,
East and West: The Kagero Diary by Michitsuna's mother
and the novellas of Maria de Zayas. Letras femeninas,
35:1 (Spring, 2009), 149-67.
LC#: PQ6055 .L48; ISSN:0277-435
--------------------
[Although it does not treat Zayas until near the end, Nieves Romero-Diaz' essay, "Revisiting the Culture of the Baroque: Nobility, City, and Post-Cervantine Novella," provides useful background, viewing the large number of collections of short novels that followed Cervantes' Novelas ejemplares as representations of the urban nobility trying to define themselves in a time of crisis. Romero-Diaz sees Zayas' novelas as reflecting that same attempt from a feminine perspective. (See the book's table of contents online.):]
Hispanic Baroques: reading cultures in context / Nicholas
Spadaccini and Luis Martín-Estudillo, editors (Hispanic
issues; v.31). Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
(xxxvi, 324 p.)
LC#: PQ6064 .H57 2005; ISBN: 0826514987, 0826514995
Includes bibliographical references and index
------------------
[This reference work includes an entry on Zayas (pp. 507-17)
by Marcia L. Welles and Mary S. Gossy, which analyzes the themes
of her two collection of tales and provides a useful review of
Spanish-language and English language criticism through the 1980s.
(See the book's
table of contents online.):]
Spanish women writers: a bio-bibliographical source book /
edited by Linda Gould Levine, Ellen Engelson Marson, and Gloria
Feiman Waldman. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. (xxxiv,
596 p.)
LC#:PQ6055 .S63 1993; ISBN: 0313268231
Includes bibliographical references and indexes
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Updated 03-20-12