Reclaiming the Body: Mar�a de Zayas's Early Modern Feminism

In a time when few women in Europe were educated and even fewer spoke out against the status quo, Maria de Zayas (1590-?) published novellas filled with criticism about gender relations. Her best-selling Novelas amorosas (1637) and Desenganos amorosos (1647) explore the pleasures and, more frequently, the perils of sex and marriage. Condemned as lewd, Zayas's work was excised from the literary canon by nineteenth-century scholars. But with the feminist revolution of the 1970s came a renewed interest in her fiction. Zayas's contemporary appeal is easily explained: through graphic images of violence against women and poignant examples of women's exclusion from social justice, she speaks to important issues of our own times.

Lisa Vollendorf illuminates this compelling author, using contemporary feminist theory to decipher the nuances of Zayas's complex ideologies. Revealing Zayas as a critical figure in European women's literary history, Vollendorf delineates the strategies and impulses behind early modern feminism.

Author: Lisa Vollendorf
Publisher: Unc Department of Romance Studies
Published: 01/01/2001
Pages: 236
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.77lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.54d
ISBN13: 9780807892749
ISBN10: 0807892742
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Women's Studies
- Social Science | Feminism & Feminist Theory
- Literary Criticism | European | Spanish & Portuguese

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