The rural novel in Giovanni Verga and Paz en la guerra by Miguel de Unamuno

Abstract

This study aims to highlight some elements such as: the rural novel in Giovanni Verga and the relation between land and national character in Unamuno’s En torno al Casticismo on Castile and Castilian men. Special attention will be put to intrahistory in the works of the two authors and how a relation may be set up between Vergas’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Unamuno’s characters Augusto Pérez and Abel Sánchez, which, on the one hand, reveal epic names (Augusto and Abel) and on the other hand, the ordinary and common surnames (Pérez and Sánchez), showing thus that we are all partly epic heroes and partly common human beings.
Moreover, there is another element that makes Unamuno —in his first intellectual period (1884-1897)— very similar to Verga: Ruralism.
Paz en la Guerra deals with Bilbao, but Unamuno highlights the popular aspect of the city. The main characters, Pedro Antonio and Ignacia, come from the fields. Their son Ignacio spends a lot of time in the country, where lives his uncle, a country priest. In all these aspects, the rural Biscay has many things in common with the Sicily of I Malavoglia.