Comparative literature
The Idiot, Dostoevsky's Russian Don Quixote
Dostoevsky called Prince Myshkin his Russian Don Quixote. The parallel between The Idiot and Don Quixote: radical kindness in a cynical world.
Literature
Who is the Knight of the White Moon?
The Knight of the White Moon defeats Don Quixote and forces him to abandon his cavalry. Who is behind the armor and why this defeat kills him.
Literature
Clavileño: the flying wooden horse
Clavileño is the wooden horse on which Don Quixote and Sancho, blindfolded, believe they are flying. The episode and what it reveals about the illusion.
Literature
The lion episode in Don Quixote
Don Quixote challenges a lion that just yawns and lies down. The episode with the lions and why the hero declares himself the winner even without combat.
Literature and politics
The Baratária Island and Sancho's government
The Dukes give Sancho Panza a fake island to laugh at him. But the squire rules wisely. The Baratária Ísula episode explained.
Literature
Who is Alonso Quijano? The man behind Don Quixote
Alonso Quijano is the La Mancha gentleman who becomes Don Quixote and returns to himself at the end. Meet the man behind the knight, and why he matters.
History and literature
Who was Avellaneda, the author of the false Quixote?
In 1614, an unauthorized continuation of Don Quixote was released, written by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Who was he and how did Cervantes respond.
Philosophy
I am me and my circumstance
Ortega y Gasset's phrase explained: there is no isolated self, always situated in a circumstance. The origin, meaning and connection with Don Quixote.
Philosophy
What is Ortega y Gasset's perspectivism?
Ortega y Gasset's perspectivism: truth is seen from an angle, without falling into relativism. The lion scene from Don Quixote as an example.
Literature
What is metafiction?
Metafiction is fiction that knows it is fiction and uses that as its subject matter. The concept explained and why Don Quixote is its first great example.
Literature and philosophy
Don Quixote, Part 2: summary and analysis
Summary and analysis of Don Quixote, Part Two, by Cervantes: metafiction, the Baratarian Island, the defeat in Barcelona and why the hero dies of reason.
Literature
"The straight is crooked and the crooked is straight"
What the witches' speech that opens Macbeth means and how the inversion of values organizes the entire play.
Latin and culture
Sic transit gloria mundi
"Thus passes the glory of the world": the origin of the Latin phrase, its use in the coronation of the popes and the echo in Macbeth.
Literary curiosities
Why is Macbeth "the Scottish play"?
Why actors avoid saying "Macbeth" and call it "the Scottish play": the origin of superstition, the supposed curse and the ritual to undo bad luck.
Comparative literature
Macbeth and Raskolnikov: the anatomy of guilt
Two men who believed that an idea authorized them to kill, and the punishment does not wait for the court: it comes first through the body.
History and literature
The Historical Macbeth: The Real King
The real Macbeth existed, reigned seventeen years and was not a monster. Who was the Scottish king and how Shakespeare transformed him via Holinshed's Chronicles.
Literature
Macbeth's prophecies explained
Birnam Forest and the man "not born of woman": what each prophecy means and how they are both fulfilled to the letter in the end.
Literature
Macbeth's descent into hell and Dante
Why does Dante put traitors on ice instead of fire? Macbeth's fall in the light of Hell: the betrayal of his relative, his guest and his master.
Literature and philosophy
Free will in Macbeth: destiny or choice?
Do witches predict the future or just reveal wish? Destiny and choice in Macbeth, with Plato's Gyges' ring as the key to reading.
Literature and life
The influence of others: Lady Macbeth
How the people around us shape what we do. The rhetoric that inverts cowardice into courage and why influence unlocks, not invents, our desire.
History and literature
Macbeth and the Gunpowder Plot
Because the play is Scottish, has witches and speaks in equivocation: the attack of 1605, King James I and the fear of the time that shaped the tragedy.
Literature
"Sound and fury, signifying nothing"
The monologue "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow": the meaning of Shakespeare's most nihilistic speech, its context in the play and the translation of the original.
Literature and philosophy
The Anatomy of Fear in Macbeth
The prophecy that reveals desire, the crime committed first in the imagination and the guilt that wins where no army would win. Shakespeare's tragedy scene by scene.
Philosophy and theology
Who was Saint Anselm of Canterbury?
Monk, archbishop and philosopher (1033-1109): life, faith that seeks understanding and the ontological argument of the Proslogion.
Philosophy and theology
Grace does not destroy nature
Saint Thomas Aquinas' principle: faith perfects reason, and truth cannot contradict truth.
Latin and tradition
Credo ut intelligam
Believing to understand, understanding to believe: Saint Augustine's formula that unites faith and reason in a single path.
Latin and tradition
Fides quaerens intellectum
The faith that seeks understanding: Saint Anselm of Canterbury's formula that defines the program of all theology.
Latin and tradition
The origin of the words reason and faith
Ratio, logos, fides, pistis, emunah: what etymology reveals and why the opposite of faith is not reason, it is distrust.
Philosophy and theology
What is scientism?
The belief that there is only what can be measured. The difference between science and scientism and why the thesis contradicts itself.
Philosophy and theology
What is Gould's NOMA?
Magisteriums that do not overlap: the separation between science and religion proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and its hidden price.