Zayas y Sotomayor, María de | Kenneth A. Stackhouse (essay date 1978)
Kenneth A. Stackhouse (essay date 1978)
SOURCE: Stackhouse, Kenneth A. “Verisimilitude, Magic, and the Supernatural in the Novelas of María de Zayas y Sotomayor.” Hispanofila 62 (1978): 65-75.
[In this essay, Stackhouse argues that Zayas used magic and the supernatural in order to circumvent the difficulties she faced as a female writer whose ideals differed from those of her society.]
María de Zayas y Sotomayor (1590-1661?) was a popular seventeenth-century post-Cervantine novelist whom many remember principally for her violent opposition to the misogyny entailed by the Spanish literary convention of pundonor.1 The purpose of this paper is to illuminate Zayas' resolution of a literary problem produced by her feminism, that of reconciling the illusion of history necessary for her ideological point of view with the supernatural and magical episodes in her tales. I propose to examine the novelist's concept of...
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