"A seventeenth-century writer of sensationalist short stories, Maria de Zayas was a best-selling author, steeped in the novella traditions of Italy and France as well as her native Spain. At the same time, she was an important player in the tabloid craze sweeping over the Europe of her day.". "In this book Marina S. Brownlee recontextualizes Maria de Zayas and provides a reading of Zayas's work from the double perspective of narratology and feminism. In doing so Brownlee explores the complexities of human subjectivity and its representation in the writings of Zayas, who offers provocative assessments of the modern subject and its relationship to gender, and of the woman writer's negotiations with authority and authorship. Brownlee shows that Zayas exploits existing fiction models in highly literary ways and in ways that cash in on the new phenomenon of tabloid publishing, arguing that Zayas is keenly aware of the new readership that resulted from the mass-production revolution in the printing industry and of the private readers' taste for scandal."--BOOK JACKET.