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 magic and the supernatural, to examine her technique of fostering the historical illusion, and...