SOURCE: Predmore, Susan. “San Manuel Bueno, mártir: A Jungian Perspective.” Hispanofila, no. 64 (September 1978): 15-29.

In the following essay, Predmore offers a Jungian interpretation of Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr.

Critics have generally agreed that San Manuel Bueno, mártir, besides culminating Unamuno's literary career, is the most intensely personal of his “nivolas,” for it is in this work that he symbolically stages conflicting aspects of his own personality. The specific nature of these psychic opponents is best described by Carlos Blanco-Aguinaga in his book, El Unamuno Contemplativo, where the author traces Unamuno's marked split personality throughout his literary works. The crux of Blanco-Aguinaga's argument is that although:

El Unamuno más vivo en la historia del pensamiento español y europeo … es el agonista … un hombre al parecer incansable que luchó consigo mismo y con Dios y contra esto y aquello, acosado en su vida por el...