Research DescriptionTranscontinental Metaliterature: A Comparative Study of Miguel de Unamuno and Fyodor Dostoevsky

People always ask me how on earth I ended up majoring in both Spanish and Russian Languages and Literatures. No matter what kind of explanation I give them, they remain stupefied. I myself had difficulty making many direct connections, but I knew I had a passion for these cultures all the same. It came as a surprise then, when this Spring semester I was reading "Mist" by the Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno, and page after page I saw characters and scenarios that seemed to be jumping straight out of a novel by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. I approached my professor, Dr. Alvarez-Castro, and he agreed that I very well might have found an undiscovered connection. While the two men were not contemporaries, I learned that Unamuno, as well as many other Spanish writers of his generation, were heavily influenced by Russian literature, especially works by Dostoevsky. Although interesting, it seemed like a simple comparison at first. However, the more I learned about each writer, the more parallels I discovered between the two, and the structure of my research reflects these complexities.

The first phase of the research is biographical and historical in nature. Although Unamuno and Dostoevsky missed each other in their primes by about three decades, each man lived during similar periods in the development of their respective homelands. Furthermore, not only was each involved in the literary spheres of their society, they also had considerable political influence. The next phase of the research is an analysis of a few original texts in order to understand the literary and artistic influence of Dostoevsky on Unamuno. The third phase is philosophical in nature, since each writer dealt with similar ideas, and since each was considered as much a philosopher as a writer. The final phase is a more holistic evaluation of the connection formed bet! ween these writers and their influences and implications within the context of modern Western civilization.

The methodology of the project lies mainly in a ton of reading and a ton of writing. While the content of this project is theoretical and abstract, I think its practicality speaks for itself. In a world of increasing technological and cultural globalization, peoples in geographic extremities are coming into proximity. In this case, the Spanish and Russian cultures will prove to have much more in common than one would think. This awareness contributes to our day-to-day understanding of cultural contact and provides insight for sympathizing with the experiences of other cultures.