SOURCE: Varey, J. E. “Maese Miguel: Puppets as a Literary Theme in the Work of Unamumo.” In Spanish Thought and Letters in the Twentieth Century, edited by German Bleiberg and E. Inman Fox, pp. 559-72. Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1966.

In the following essay, Varey discusses how Unamumo utilizes images of puppets and puppetry as a recurring thematic motif throughout his body of work.

“Aujourd'hui”—wrote Emile Zola in 1881—“le roman est devenu l'outil du siècle, la grande enquête sur l'homme et sur la nature.”¹ Thirty-four years later, in 1925, José Ortega y Gasset declared that the new art was to be interpreted as “un ensayo de crear puerilidad en un mundo viejo.”² Between these two quotations lies the greater part of the novelistic output of Miguel de Unamuno, and it is within the framework formed by these two contrasted attitudes to art that I shall consider...