Zayas and Her Sisters. Vol. I. An Anthology of Novelas by 17th-Century Spanish Women by ed. Whitenack, Judith A. and Gwyn E. Campbell, Zayas and Her Sisters. Vol. II. Essays on Novelas by 17th-Century Spanish Women by ed. Whitenack, Judith A. and Gwyn E. Campbell (review)

144 Reviews D D D D D Whitenack, Judith A. and Gwyn E. Campbell, eds. Zayas and Her Sisters. Vol. I. An Anthology of Novelas by 17th -Century Spanish Women. University of North Carolina at Ashville: Pegasus Press, 2000. xlvi + 410 pp. ISBN I-889818-24-0. Whitenack, Judith A. and Gwyn E. Campbell, eds. Zayas and Her Sisters. Vol. II. Essays on Novelas by 17th -Century Spanish Women. Studies on Spanish Classical Literature No. 1. Binghamton University: Global Publications. Institute of Global Cultural Studies, 2001. xxii + 286 pp. ISBN 1-586840-97-5. The paired volumes of critical studies and novela cortas edited by Campbell and Whitenack make more accessible substantial material of value for researchers and students from overlapping fields of literature, socio-cultural history, and gender studies. Volume I offers nine texts by María de Zayas y Sotomayor and six from her contemporaries—Leonor de Meneses, Mariana de Carvajal y Saavedra, and Ana Francisca Abarca de Bolea y Mur. The seventeen essays of Volume II dialogue with each other as well as comment on the tales included in the first volume. The editors’commendable introductions, notes, and bibliographies in both volumes bring together relevant details on the status of the genre, critical methodologies, and biographical or bibliographical discoveries on the authors. They modestly propose that the two tomes contribute to a changing Golden Age canon, one more inclusive of popular culture and successful in recovering “lost voices” of early modern Spanish society. Editors and essayists demonstrate that our recovery efforts must start with the portrayed lives of seventeenth-century women in order to understand how and why they wrote and read as they did. In effect, the interrelated volumes provide evidence of a wide-range of points of view and ways of thinking and feeling that bring life to the literature of the era. Just as the novelas do not represent a stereotype of women’s ways of writing or women’s feelings about their lives, the accompanying studies use distinct yet sometimes interrelated investigative tools to uncover the new terrain the materials presented. The essayists endeavor to situate the methodologies of their approaches within the reality of the seventeenth-century, even when using psychoanalytic theory. In analyzing often overlooked narrative details and strategies of the novelas, they reveal the media in which women as listeners, readers, and writers perceived and conceptualized their worlds. Hence the studies sometimes present differences, whether subtle or bold, from more canonical views. We are reminded that even Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares—often contrasted with tales by Zayas and her sisters—were Reseñas 145 D D D D D also the popular reading or listening material in their day, not high art. Although neither the authors, the tellers of the frame stories nor the other voices in the novelas embody a wide range of female lifestyles for the period, they do represent dissimilar backgrounds and somewhat diverse values even within the nobility or aspiring social groups. Despite the privileged positions the characters or writers might epitomize, the editors and the contributors tend to agree that these female-authored stories include some degree of social criticism and subversion, whether subtle or more overt. When compared to maleauthored stories, these women writers tend to use more female characters and to center more action in social spaces occupied by women. With the tales made available by Volume I of Zayas and Her Sisters, professors have an opportunity to revitalize course reading lists for Spanish majors and graduate students. When we consider how difficult many students find early prose fiction, these fast-paced and fascinating tales offer fresh alternatives to reading longer picaresque or courtly works alone and provide greater variety than the Novelas ejemplares as the sole examples of short fiction. Beginning with the fact that the authors were women from diverse circumstances and regions of Spain and continuing into discussion on the events and characters portrayed in their tales, classes will have opportunities to gain greater cultural insight into the era. What role do magic or superstition and fantasy play in several of the stories and why? Are Zayas’s tales really more negative than the others or do all the authors...