Miguel de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was among the most forceful Spanish writers of his generation — a philosopher, novelist, poet and playwright who served twice as rector of the University of Salamanca. His central subject was the conflict between reason and the human refusal to accept oblivion, argued in Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (1913). Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905) reads Cervantes’s novel as a spiritual text and treats Quixote’s willingness to look ridiculous as a virtue rather than a joke.