Paz en la guerra, the «National Episode» of Miguel de Unamuno

Abstract

The new historical novel, devised from the precepts of late nineteenth- century positivism, casts itself as an objective analysis of society that equally supports a historicist perspective on social development. Consistent with these premises, Miguel de Unamuno’s Paz en la guerra narrates the lives of its characters against the backdrop of the last Carlist War, the siege of Bilbao, and the ideological opposition between Carlists and liberals. From the work’s positivist and liberal historicism, these events serve to render intelligible the historical present from which Unamuno writes the novel, and specifically serve to understand the problem of the Restoration. However, alongside the customary artistic conventions of realism and naturalism by means of which events are depicted, Hegelian idealism enters the work as an alternative view that brings a truly singular conclusion to this historical novel.