¿Misoginia o defensa de la mujer? La ambigüedad enunciativa en El prevenido engañado de María de Zayas

Abstract

The short novel entitled The Cheated Cautious Man has often been regarded as an example of a comic and farcelike fiction close to the Italian novellieri’s style: after having tested the instructed women’s evilness, Don Fadrique is cheated by the innocent astuce of a very young girl which don Fadrique had kept ignorant by thinking that her stupidity would make her more loyal than instructed woman. This paper tries to qualify the last interpretation by supporting on two different types of poetic analysis: on one hand, the comical tone is balanced by a serious and even pathetical register which reminds readers of Zayas indignation about women’s harassment by men in most of her remaining novels. But, overall, the precise study of narrative voice adopting alternatively the male and female point of view, tends to create an echo between the novel and womens’s quarrel.

Keywords

• Zayas María de
• narrative voice
• poetic register
• misogyny
• feminism