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Verbalizing the Visual: María de Zayas, Mariana de Carvajal, and the Frame-Narrative Device

This article analyzes visual effects in prose works by two seventeenth-century Spanish authors, María de Zayas y Sotomayor and Mariana de Carvajal y Saavedra. Zayas became renowned in her lifetime, and she continues to attract attention for her two prose works, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares ("Amorous and Exemplary Novellas") and Desengaños amorosos ("Disenchantments of Love"), which were first published in 1637 and 1647, respectively. In contrast, Carvajal's Navidades de Madrid ("Christmas in Madrid" [1663]) has been relatively overlooked and is only now receiving due attention and reassessment by scholars. Structurally, both authors adhered to the long-established model of frame narrative and enclosed novellas. This article demonstrates that Zayas's and Carvajal's texts can be fruitfully compared due to the shared features of their frame narratives. In these narratives, the verbal and the visual are effectively intertwined, resulting in the vivid portrayal of an intimate domestic sphere that is set within a privileged urban milieu. This study examines visual details in Zayas's and Carvajal's house-bound frame narratives, making special reference to the symbolism of clothing, decor, and food within confined storytelling environments. Furthermore, this article considers, inscribed within these visually oriented narratives, social commentary relating to the changing situation of the urban nobility. Thus, as the article reveals, the reader of these texts is simultaneously exposed to selected luxuries of affluent seventeenth-century Spanish life and to the societal ramifications thereof.