Style and Narrative Techniques in Unamuno's Work
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The Style and Narrative Techniques in Unamuno's Work
The content, style, character in the novel, ideological and conceptual, determines the style of the text. It is permeated with narration. The terminology is abstract, full of paradoxes, antitheses, metaphors, metonymy, and symbols. In addition, the style is determined by the presence of a fictional narrator: a 50-year-old woman, who, in writing her memoirs, recalls past events. There are digressions and reflections—some with an ironic tone—of the narrative thread, with exaggerations and reiterations.
Narrative Techniques
All the novel is reconstructed on the literary device of the found manuscript. Using the found manuscript, Unamuno strengthens the intended verisimilitude, making the reader believe that Angela is a real being, and that Manuel also really existed. However, Unamuno is aware and recognizes himself behind the narrator. The author's emphasis is on these characters (real or not) representing a human drama in a real situation. The device of the found manuscript, therefore, is a technical resource that serves Unamuno to lend verisimilitude to the story, to manifest the humanity of the characters, and to distance himself from them by choosing a woman as the narrator.
Reflections of the Narrator
The found manuscript permits the narrator to make other reflections, comments, and observations about what is happening in the story: directly in the epilogue, with undisguised authorship, and indirectly through the narrator, who reflects ironically. These reflections are oriented to the reader and reveal the doubts and anguish suffered by Manuel.
Predominance of Narrative and Dialogue
As it is a memoir, narrative dominates (the events related to Don Manuel, directly witnessed by the narrator, and the anecdotes and news she had indirectly). The narrator is only partially omniscient about the protagonist's history. Therefore, on occasions, she argues the fragility of memory, forgetfulness, confusion, etc. There is no description or interior monologue.
Dialogues are reproduced either as the narrator heard them directly or as dialogues between Manuel and Lazarus that Lazarus repeated to Angela, or from Lazarus's writings. In both narrative and dialogue, there is no ambiguity about the veracity of what was said. Angela concludes her memoirs by saying: "I do not know what is true and what is a lie, nor what I saw and what I only dreamed."
Careful and Complex Language
Language, in its apparent simplicity... Although Unamuno is aware that, in theory, a colloquial language should be employed, and that the writing of the story corresponds to a small-town woman with average studies, who uses language very carefully, and even with a literary and poetic character. There are no concessions to the rural language or the language of simple people. We should distinguish the language of the narrative and the dialogues. The first belongs to Angela, the second to the characters in each case. There are no substantial differences between the two registers (narrative and conversational), and the narrator and the characters use a similar language. We must think that Unamuno did not intend to write simple prose, reflecting the language of a woman who has only studied for five years in a school of nuns and has not left her village. The prose of the novel is of complex literary style. Sentences are presented in a complex syntax that develops as a single paragraph that presents various subordinations and different modalities of appositions, perfectly ordered by the criteria of logical grammar.
Literary Language: Examples
Besides the complexity of the syntax, we find ourselves with a deliberately literary and poetic language, as shown in the following features: the nostalgic tone, achieved through a sensitive lexicon and the enclitic positioning of "se" (an archaism); the romantic setting and the deliberately sensory tone of some fragments; the constant use of comparisons and images; the constant use of metaphor, sometimes in allegorical fragments.