SOURCE: Tull, J. F., Jr. “Alienation, Psychological and Metaphysical, in Three ‘Nivolas’ of Unamuno.” The Humanities Association Bulletin 21, no. 1 (winter 1970): 27-33.

In the following essay, Tull examines the theme of alienation in Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr.

The concept of alienation, both as a psychological term and as a literary theme, seems to be in the process of becoming an empty abstraction, a stereotyped artifice to label conveniently what is, in truth, a habitual way of viewing human society and the universe shared by many individuals in the contemporary world. Actually, the sense of alienation is not new. As a psychological phenomenon in Western culture, it has its roots in the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution in the last century, and on a deeper level, metaphysical alienation began with the dawn of human consciousness, as symbolized in the myth of the Garden of Eden, when man first felt...