Miguel de Unamuno,  the most notable representative of the literary group Generación del 98',  was an intellectual fighter, vehement and always inciting. He has a style detached from old rhetoric, although he has what he calls his own personal rhetoric. He strives to find a naked literary style, in contrast to the elitists who dress language within finery and duplicity, and whom he critically describes as 'tailors of literature'. His aim is to obtain a language full of plastic accuracy, not elegance. In a permanent struggle with language, he molds it to accurately adjust it to his thoughts, until he achieves what he described as 'dry, precise and fast' language. His lyrics are made of rough and robust rhythms, regardless of any current fashion, reason why they were not appreciated until years later. 

His internal contradictions are reflected in his fondness for paradoxes and antitheses. His genius and creativity lead him to give new meanings to words, relying on his knowledge as a philologist. In his pursuit to renew the narrative technique, hence I called the novel 'nivola'. The author recurred to literature to express his philosophical reflections and resolve his understanding of the different aspects of reality. His personal anguish led him to understand the individual in the most essential terms, as a 'body of flesh and blood', and life as an end in itself. This thought was remarkably projected in works such as Soliloquios y conversaciones  (1911) and,  Del sentimiento trágico de la vida en los hombres y los pueblos (1913).

All his work revolves around two centers of interest: the problem of Spain and the meaning of human life. In search of what he called the 'Spanish soul', he defended the concept of "intra-history" as the history unnoticeable of the common man, in opposition to the official concept of history. All his work revolves around the same themes, such as the drama of the intimacy of life, the struggle to cope with feelings of opposing nature,  and the ravages with faith, through characters always conflictive and highly sensitive to the cruelty with which reality is imposed. Reflecting on the dilemma between the individual and the collective is for Unamuno the key to understand and carry out the long-awaited moral and civic regeneration of Spanish socie

Herbert Spencer

Kierkegaard

William James

Henri Bergson

Niebla 

Abel Sánchez 

San Manuel Bueno, mártir 

Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho 

La tía Tula 

Paz en la guerra 

Amor y Pedagogía 

Del sentimiento trágico de la vida 

La agonía del cristianismo 

El Otro 

The novel revolves around themes such as the immortality of the human soul and faith, posed in an environment that alternates between the tragic feeling of life and illusory happiness.

Fiction

Narrative

The Generation of '98 is made up of a series of writers who respond with their literary works to the tragic awareness of decline that is perceived in Spain at the end of the 19th century. In 1895 began the rebellion of the overseas colonies against the metropolis. The decisive intervention of the United States in favor of the colonies, particularly in Cuba, forces Spain to sign the Treaty of Paris, by which it abandons what was left of its old empire. Human and economic losses will go down in history under the name of "Disaster of 98". 

The founding nucleus of writers from the Generation of '98 is made up of Azorín, Pío Baroja, and Ramiro de Maeztu. Autodidacticism and their religious heterodoxy are some of the traits that most identify them, in addition to their revolutionary ideas and their admiration for similar philosophers of the time. They will be joined by Unamuno, Antonio Machado, and Valle-Inclán. All of them are concerned about the politics of the moment, the historical problems of Spain, and its desire for Europeanization. 

From an aesthetic point of view, his style is characterized by a sustained opposition to traditional rhetoric, as well as a taste for the use of traditional speaking in their writings. The subjectivist character of the literary movement impregnates these authors' works with an intense subjectivism, notably in their descriptions of the Castilian landscape, where what is seen is inseparable from the way of looking, fusing landscape with their soul in an intense combination of reality and sensitivity.

Generation of '98

Antonio Machado publishes his collection of poems Soldedades, galerias y otros poemas.

Azorín publishes Castilla, a book that represents the quintessence of Azorín's work, contemplating the landscape as a "small" story passed through time and seeking in literature an expression of the national spirit.

Antonio Machado publishes Campos de Castilla, a book that includes a mixture of poems, proverbs and a romance, in which the autor captures the tark landscape and spirit of Castile.

José Ortega y Gasset prublishes Meditaciones del Quijote, a profound introspection on the universal meaning of life.

Miguel de Unamuno publishes his novel Niebla, a story of impossible love that explores the confusion of existence.

Juan Ramón Jiménez publishes Platero y yo, a prose poem about his homeland in Andalusia, tells the story of a man and his donkey.

Ortega y Gasset publishes La deshumanización del arte, a philosophical book in which he alludes to avant-garde art and literature (the “isms”) that emerged after the First World War.

Rafael Alberty publishes Marinero en tierra, where the poet recovers the memory of the immediacy of the sea in his childhood.

Marcel Proust publishes In Search of Lost Time, the story of Proust's own life, told as an allegorical search for truth.

Frank Kafka publishes The Metamorphosis, the life struggles of a man that wakes up one morning inexplicably transform into a huge insect.

Herman Hesse publishes Demian, a demonic hero who rejects Chistian morality with contempt.

The play Six Characters in Search of an author, by Luigi Pirandello is performed for the first time. The work is an aburdist methatheatrical play in which the caracters claim that they are incomplete creations of an author who couldn't finish the work for which they were conceived. 

Rainer Maria Rilke publishes his collectionof then elegies,Duino Elegies, a loud cry out of his solitude.

Italo Calvino publishes Zeno's Conscience, a novel about a neurotic Italian businessman.

World economic crisis starts in New York.

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San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1931)

By Miguel de Unamuno

Time Period: Generation of '98

Genre: Fiction, Narrative

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