History as «beautiful art»

About the entrance speech of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo at the Royal Academy of History in 1883

Abstract

The aim of this article is to extract the similarities and differences between history and literature in the aesthetic field. To do this, a comparison is made between the two and is divided into three groups: the first, that of the conceptual components, covers the theme and the background; the second, the formal components such as the substrate, the modality and the genericity and, finally, that of the functional components includes communication and fictionalization. The two activities, literature and historiography, are necessary and both can produce works of a considerable aesthetic level. History, however, is characterized by objectivity and impartiality. Thus, it is concluded that the value of history lies in its ability to represent the past as it was and make it understandable to people of later times.