SOURCE: Welles, Marcia L. “María de Zayas y Sotomayor and Her novella cortesana: A Re-evaluation.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 55, no. 4 (October 1978): 301-10.

In the following essay, Welles offers an evaluation of Zayas's short stories, contending that her writing was popular not just because of its content, but also because of its superb craftsmanship, including the use of formulaic elements in innovative ways.

The short story, or novela cortesana,¹ had a wide and rapid diffusion after the initial impetus of the publication of the Novelas ejemplares of Cervantes in 1613. Yet the splendour of the Golden-Age drama, the grandeur of Cervantes' creation of the modern novel, and the importance of the development of the picaresque genre have relegated these stories to relative obscurity. They are classified as an outgrowth of the Novelas ejemplares and associated with the extensively circulated and imitated Italian novellieri, especially Boccaccio, Bandello and Cinthio.² At...