Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T05:17:48.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Chiasmus: Unamuno's Master Trope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Thomas Mermall
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

To become all things, thereby resolving all contradictions, was a supreme aspiration of Renaissance humanists from Pico della Mirandola to Fray Luis de Leon. Prompted by the existential aporias of a search for truth and characterized by recourse to the chiastic paradox, Unamuno takes up this challenge and transforms it into an essential element of his modernist poetics. As an incipient but unconsummated form of dialectical argumentation, the chiasmus arrests progressive movement toward the resolution of the contradictions it generates. This master trope enables Unamuno to become all things yet rest in none, simultaneously to affirm and to deny momentous philosophical and moral positions, to offer multiple choices of being, and to avoid closure.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 2 , March 1990 , pp. 245 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Azar, Inés. “La estructura novelesca de Cómo se hace una novela.” MLN 85 (1970): 184–206.Google Scholar
Blanco Aguinaga, Carlos. El Unamuno contemplativo. México Ciudad: Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 1959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreño, Antonio. La dialéctica de la identidad en la poesía contemporánea: La persona, la mascara. Madrid: Gredos, 1982.Google Scholar
Cassou, Jean. Introduction. “Retrato de Unamuno.” Cómo se hace una novela. Unamuno y Jugo 8: 713–18.Google Scholar
Colie, Rosalie. Paradoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966.Google Scholar
Díaz, Elías. “Por una política de la ‘alterutralidad.‘” El país 30 Dec. 1986: 5–7.Google Scholar
Fernández Larraín, Sergio, ed. Cartas inéditas de Miguel de Unamuno. Madrid: Rodas, 1972.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966.Google Scholar
Franz, Thomas R.The Word in the World: Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Language. Athens: Strathmore, 1987.Google Scholar
Gilman, Ernest B.The Curious Perspective: Literary and Pictorial Wit in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven: Yale UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Group μ. A General Rhetoric. Trans. Burrell, Paul and Slotkin, Edgar. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Ilie, Paul. Unamuno: An Existential View of Self and Society. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1967.Google Scholar
Jurkevich, Gayana. “Archetypal Motifs of the Double in Unamuno's Abel Sánchez.” Forthcoming in Hispania 73.2 (1990).Google Scholar
Kierkegaard, Soren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. A Kierkegaard Anthology. Ed. Bretall, Robert. New York: Modern Library, 1946. 190–258.Google Scholar
Lacy, Allen. Miguel de Unamuno: The Rhetoric of Existence. The Hague: Mouton, 1967.Google Scholar
Mermall, Thomas. “Unamuno's Mystical Rhetoric.” Analysis of Hispanic Texts: Current Trends in Methodology. Ed. Keller, Gary and Tarán, Isabel. New York: Bilingual, 1976. 256–64.Google Scholar
Navajas, Gonzalo. Miguelde Unamuno: Bipolaridad y síntesis ficcional. Barcelona: Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias, 1988.Google Scholar
Nozick, Martin. Miguel de Unamuno: The Agony of Belief. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Olson, Paul R. “Sobre las estructuras quiâsticas en el pensamiento unamuniano (interpretación de un juego de palabras).” Homenaje a Juan López-Morillas. Ed. Amory Vásquez, José and Kossof, A. David. Madrid: Castalia, 1982. 359–68.Google Scholar
Olson, Paul R. “Unamuno's Lacquered Boxes: Cómo se hace una novela and the Ontology of Writing.” Rivista hispánica moderna 36 (1970–71): 186–99.Google Scholar
Orringer, Nelson R. Unamuno y los protestantes liberales (1912): Sobre las fuentes de Del sentimiento trágico de la vida. Madrid: Gredos, 1985.Google Scholar
Paz, Octavio. Los hijos del limo. Barcelona: Seix Barrai, 1974.Google Scholar
Perelman, Chaim, and Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Trans. Wilkinson, John and Weaver, Purcell. Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Oration on the Dignity of Man. Renaissance Philosophy: The Italian Philosophers. Ed. and trans. Fallico, Arturo B. and Shapiro, Herman. New York: Modern Library, 1967.Google Scholar
Reiss, Timothy J.The Discourse of Modernism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Suhamy, Henri. Les figures de style. Paris: PUF, 1981.Google Scholar
Trias, Eugenio. El artistayla ciudad. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1976.Google Scholar
Unamuno y Jugo, Miguel de. Obras complétas. Ed. Manuel García Blanco. 9 vols. Madrid: Escelicer, 1966–71.Google Scholar
Valdés, Mario. Introduction. An Unamuno Sourcebook. By Valdés and María Elena de Valdés. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1973. xiii–xxxiv.CrossRefGoogle Scholar