El Mito cainita y el deseo mimético en la literatura filosófica de Unamuno

Miguel de Unamuno reconstructs the myth of Cain and Abel to incorporate it into his literary poetics, with the desire to explore the deepest human passions. His novel Abel Sánchez and his play The Other are the works in which he fundamentally rewrites the Cainite paradigm to reveal the role that the rivalry that derives from mimetic desire has in human nature. Thus, Unamuno departs from the writing of the romantic story and inscribes his philosophical literature in the tradition of the novelistic story theorized by René Girard. The Basque philosopher explores the mechanisms through which —both with regard to the construction of one's own identity and in what corresponds to the consolidation of the fulfillment of desire— envy is a passion and an anthropological condition that stands out in the molding and destruction of the human character, to the extent that it becomes the link with otherness.