| Popis: |
Starting from the definition of the term "Serendipia" given by the Dictionary of the Real Academia Española, this article tries to define the specific ways in which two of the greatest philosophers of the Spanish twentieth century deal with the legacy of Cervantes’ novel, Don Quijote. Both Miguel de Unamuno and José Ortega y Gasset offer a very personal interpretation of this universal masterpiece of literature, and in this sense I define as a serendipity their capacity to find their own Weltanschauung in a text written by another author. Nevertheless, their attitude towards Don Quijote is very different: while Unamuno transformed the hidalgo into a tragic projection of his own identity, Ortega y Gasset developed in his first essay (Meditaciones del Quijote) a complex system that could be described as double-sided. On one hand, he is concerned with his national leadership as a thinker and therefore uses Don Quijote as the paradigm of the Spanish cultural soul; on the other hand, he connects the novel with his most brilliant insights on the phenomenological perception and on knowledge in culture texts. |
