The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria De Zayas
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: April 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9780812235371
Subjects: General & Literary Fiction; Literary studies: general; Novels, other prose & writers; Zayas y Sotomayor, Maria de,; Literature: Classics; Spanish Novel And Short Story; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Spanish; Portugal; Spain; Novelas amorosas y ejemplares; European - Spanish & Portuguese; Women Authors; Zayas y Sotomayor, Marâia de,; 1590-1650; 1590-1650; Literary style; Paradox in literature
First sentence: The distance separating early modern Europe from previous ages, in Michel Foucault's intriguing analogy, is that between the public spectacle characteristic of premodern cultures and the dominance of private surveillance in the modern world.
Description: "A seventeenth-century writer of sensationalist short stories, Maria de Zayas was a best-selling author, steeped in the novella traditions of Italy and France as well as her native Spain. At the same time, she was an important player in the tabloid craze sweeping over the Europe of her day.".

"In this book Marina S. Brownlee recontextualizes Maria de Zayas and provides a reading of Zayas's work from the double perspective of narratology and feminism. In doing so Brownlee explores the complexities of human subjectivity and its representation in the writings of Zayas, who offers provocative assessments of the modern subject and its relationship to gender, and of the woman writer's negotiations with authority and authorship.

Brownlee shows that Zayas exploits existing fiction models in highly literary ways and in ways that cash in on the new phenomenon of tabloid publishing, arguing that Zayas is keenly aware of the new readership that resulted from the mass-production revolution in the printing industry and of the private readers' taste for scandal."--BOOK JACKET.