SOURCE: Brownlee, Marina S. “Baroque Subjects: Changing Perspectives in Zayas's Novelas.” In The Cultural Labyrinth of María de Zayas, pp. 26-73. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

In the essay that follows, Brownlee draws a parallel between the postmodern theories of cultural historians of the early twentieth century and the cultural climate in which Zayas produced her work, noting that there are several instances where the two share fundamental similarities.

When the Novel becomes the dominant genre, epistemology becomes the dominant discipline.

—Mikhail Bakhtin, “Epic and Novel”

Baroque and Postmodern

The cultural function of the literary text, currently the focus of much theorizing, is as central to the formulations of postmodern theorists as it is to cultural historians of the early modern period. As noted in the first chapter, in a number of its primary concerns postmodern thought bears a striking congruence to the Baroque, the cultural...