Humanities

In Mircea Eliade’s Men and Stones, two cave explorers, Alexandru and Petrus, seek to imaginatively recreate a distant human dawn after they discover the sacred stones of cave dwellers. The living stones become a metaphor for an eternal dimension of transient humanity and for a sentient universe. The title of this play is taken from the Koran and evokes Alexandru’s crisis of despair in the cave. After he is injured in a fall, Alexandru experiences a revelation that confirms love as a pathway to knowledge and as the surest means of escape from the labyrinth of despair.

Miguel de Unamuno’s Abel Sánchez (1917) explores the Cain and Abel archetype. The protagonist of Unamuno’s novel, Joaquín Monegro, undermines the traditional dichotomy between good and evil, as well as the biblical image of Cain as sociopath. Although he is forever envious of his friend Abel, Joaquín yearns for transformative knowledge, like Byron’s dramatic character Cain. This essay examines the spiritual rupture of a man that is at once noble and base, and whose inner torment may be his saving grace. 
Keywords Unamuno, Abel Sánchez, Cain, archetype, fratricide, jealousy, Byron

ABSTRACT: This essay examines essentialist representation of Hispanic peoples and cultures in three textbooks, Spanish for Secondary Schools (1961), Mi Historia Universal (1978), and Civilización y Cultura (1993). Those textbooks tend to portray Hispanics as ...