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The Chiasmus: Unamuno's Master Trope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Thomas Mermall
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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.

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

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