El sujeto del control en la narrativa de María de Zayas: Arquitectura social, cuerpo normativo y Desengaño lingüístico
Abstract
This dissertation articulates María de Zayas' model of female subjectivity as a means of social agency and critique against the backdrop of the project of social and generic normalization of her time. Foucault's theory of social power, contextualized by means of the perspective of Spanish historians and literary theorists, helps describe early modern Spain. The title alludes directly to Anthony Cascardi's article “Afterword: The Subject of Control” regarding Gracián and the “discreto,” since Zayas, similarly to Gracián, employs the idea of discreción or self-control in the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares (1637) when presenting a viable model of female subjectivity and agency. Zayas contrasts the discreta and the woman at home, bound by architecture, prescribed in the Christian treatises written by Vives and de León. Her descriptions of the improper female bodies—which are to be understood not only in relation to the normative woman of the treatises for women but also in relation to the normalization of the social body addressed in the treatises of courtesy, like Gracián Dantisco's Galateo—question the legitimacy of the domestic monarch as well as of the State that supports its existence. Ambiguity pervades the description of innumerable sexual details which make the stories a catalogue of peripheral sexualities intent on criticising society's double sexual standard and, particularly, the idleness of male courtiers. The model of the discreta is no longer viable in the Desengaños amorosos (1647), a work about control, in which Zayas sees the need to appeal to the discreto as a means to include the male contemporaries in the social reform needed for improving women's conditions. Zayas' position follows the dominant models regarding race but is contradictory regarding class. Her ironic portrayal of aristocrats as well as of the colonial enterprise, together with the depiction of the emergence of a new social class, call into question what is commonly regarded as her aristocratic stance.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Ganelin, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Romance literature|Womens studies
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