El arte de la novela de Cervantes a Zayas

The claim of a Cervantes’ effect in Zayas’s narrative might be regarded as contradictory, especially considering the formal differences in their novelistic structure. At first, one might argue that the absence of a frame in Exemplary Novels places the novel in the opposite category to Honesto y entretenido sarao’s Boccaccian use of a frame tale. However, after a more detailed analysis, I will argue that these works are two sides of the same coin in their way of dealing with narrative problems. In Zayas, the interrelation between the frame story and inserted novels reveals a novelty. Zayas aligns with Cervantes in the rejection of the conventional use of narrative formula, although Zayas opts for the extreme opposite to the omission of the framework. Considering the Cervantine lesson about the internal ties of the novels, Zayas creates a structure where unity is established by the frame story.