SOURCE: Glannon, Walter. “Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir: Ethics through Fiction.” Modern Language Notes 102, no. 2 (March 1987): 316-33.

In the following essay, Glannon provides a close reading of Unamuno's 1931 novel, San Manuel Bueno, mártir, to explore the ways in which the novel addresses the possibilities of meaning in a world that appears godless and pointless.

“… hier am Ende der Leiter steht der Asket und Märtyrer.”

Nietzsche: Morgenröthe, 113

Miguel de Unamuno was a writer of chameleon-like shifts in both personal and intellectual mood throughout his life: the flirtation with the ideas of Comte, Spencer, Marx, and Hegel, and the brief affiliation with the Socialist Party in Spain in the early 1890's; his religious crisis of 1897; the strains of stoic resignation in his later writings, doubtless effected by his years of exile in France from 1924 until 1930. Yet through the fictional characters of his novels and personal avowals...