Reclaiming the Body: María de Zayas's Early Modern FeminismIn a time when few women in Europe were educated and even fewer spoke out against the status quo, Maria de Zayas (1590 ?) published novellas filled with criticism about gender relations. Her best selling Novelas amorosas (1637) and Desenganos amorosos (1647) explore the pleasures and, more frequently, the perils of sex and marriage. Condemned as lewd, Zayas's work was excised from the literary canon by nineteenth century scholars. But with the