ABSTRACT
Miguel de Unamuno was the most important writer of the socalled Generation of '98, the group of Spanish authors who were preoccupied with the future of Spain and who rejuvenated Spanish letters during the time of the Spanish-American War. His novels, as well as his essays, poetry, short stories, and plays, treat the philosophical themes of the essence of Spanishness. Unamuno's work also reflected his interest in questions of reason versus faith, immortality, the hereafter, and existentialist agony (S0ren Kierkegaard was his spiritual mentor). Unamuno's beliefs, while earning him the castigation of the Church in a strongly Catholic society, were loudly voiced and strongly pronounced in spite of monarchical protest, dictatorial threats, exile and the revocation of his position as President of the University of Salamanca, and house arrest by the same Franco regime he had previously supported. His personal philosophy of life was intellectually based and existentially engaged and centered on the theory that humanity's need for immortality proves the existence of God, but that a faith only passively accepted is no faith at all.
