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RESUMEN: Unamuno leía libros de sermones, se dejaba influir por ellos, los acotaba y hasta escribía sermones propios, descritos por él como "sermones laicos con sus tintes protestantes." En este ensayo, explicamos lo que Unamuno entendía por tales sermones y, para ser precisos, empleamos la definición del protestante no sectario (como Unamuno) Dr. Pedro A. Jiménez. Un ejemplo espléndido es "¡Plenitud de plenitudes y todo plenitud!" Examinamos la Meditación evangélica "El mal del siglo," mina para los temas de futuros sermones de Unamuno, todos dependientes del pensamiento protestante. Asimismo, analizamos "¿Qué es la verdad?"; "Nicodemo el fariseo"; "¡Pistis y no gnosis!" y su versión corregida "La fe"; "El buen ladrón"; "Principios de dolores de parto"; y dos sermones versificados: "Del Sinaí al Calvario" y "Fatalidad." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study considers the role and function that humor has in Unamuno's intellectual and literary universe. It traces Unamuno's attitude toward humor to his reading of the Spanish character inEn torno al casticismo(1895) and to his dialogue with the figure of Don Quixote, as found inVida de Don Quijote y Sancho(1905) andDel sentimiento trágico de la vida(1912). Finally, it looks at the theory of humor offered in the novelNiebla(1914) and also at the role that humor played in Unamuno's later political writings, especially those of exile (1924–1930). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the importance of doubt in Western philosophy, with particular attention to the work of Søren Kierkegaard and Miguel de Unamuno. Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author Johannes Climacus ventures down the pathway of doubt, finds it perplexing and difficult and discovers that he is unable to return to his pre-doubting self. In despair, the meaningfulness of his life is called into question. Unamuno, a great admirer of Kierkegaard, acknowledges the suffering that accompanies doubt while affirming the pivotal role of uncertainty, despair and struggle in realising our humanity. From Unamuno, we can acquire a keener sense of the part education has to play in both forming us as doubting beings and allowing us to work constructively with the despair engendered by this formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay takes José Ortega y Gasset’s famous comment ‘yo soy yo y mi circunstancia’ and Kaja Silverman’s view that perception is always ‘propped’ on things we have seen before and retraces the ‘circunstancias’ of the development of visual studies within British Hispanism, then considers the making of the ‘parque escultórico’ in the Canary Island of Fuerteventura. Linking the development of the this sculpture park to Unamuno’s exile on the island, when he took to walking around the capital, then known as Puerto de Cabras, this essay takes a contemporaryviaje al azararound the public art that is now located in the present-day capital, now known as Puerto del Rosario. It argues that the creation of the ‘parque escultórico’ is an attractive contemporary visual case study: as an example of how far the discipline has developed since the time when writers like Unamuno and Ortega y Gasset were the mainstay of the Hispanic Studies literary curriculum; as an example of what can be achieved when the ‘circunstancias’ of local government, artist and viewer are embraced from the start; and as a model for sustainable cultural development in times of economic recession. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cervantes' Don Quixote has produced a rich exegetical tradition since its publication four centuries ago. A long-standing reading tradition has described it as the foundation of the modern realist novel. An also well-established reading tradition, not necessarily opposed to the other one, has stressed an element of semiotic indeterminacy and instability of meaning as its major attribute. This article focuses on the readings of four twentieth-century writers: Miguel de Unamuno, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Milan Kundera. How did these writers place themselves in relation to those reading traditions? In what ways do their texts interact with Cervantes' novel and with the multiple elements it has to offer? This essay highlights aspects of Don Quixote that the readings of these four writers reveal, while at the same time reflecting on aspects of their own poetics that their readings serve to clarify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the notion of the shadow and its traditional meanings across the centuries in areas such as folklore, literature, and psychology, focusing on its importance in Gothic texts and certain characters found there, including the vampire and the Doppelgänger. It goes on to consider the motif of the shadow that separates from the body that casts it and what that can signify in different contexts, leading to a study of Miguel de Unamuno's essay 'La sombra sin cuerpo'. Here it is argued that three different but interlinked elements can be discerned in his treatment of the theme: a transnational Gothic aspect drawn from Adalbert von Chamisso's novella, Peter Schlemiel; a Hispanic one, which relates the shadow to honour; and a typically Unamunian one whereby it articulates some of his perennial questions about the human condition and existential (in)dependence relative to the creator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]