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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
The Chiasmus: Unamuno's Master Trope
Contributor:
Mermall, Thomas
imprint:
Modern Language Association of America, 1990
Published in:PMLA
Language:
English
ISSN:
0030-8129
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>To become all things, thereby resolving all contradictions, was a supreme aspiration of Renaissance humanists from Pico della Mirandola to Fray Luis de León. 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.</p>