San Manuel Bueno, mártir and the Art of Hagiography

Abstract

This essay reads Miguel de Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1930) against the background of modern hagiographies produced in the early twentieth century when books about the lives of saints were experiencing a return to popularity. It draws comparisons between Unamuno's short novel and the work of BenjamínJarnés, in particular Mosén Pedro (1924) and Sor Patrocinio (1929), demonstrating in the process that modernism's reproduction of the subjectivity of experience and its general literariness need neither preclude a genuine interest in saintliness nor undermine a hagiography's saintly premise. Indeed, this essay argues that Unamuno's novel coheres with a body of work which by embracing modern notions of subjectivism manages to provide vivid accounts of saintly lives (whether real or imagined) and thereby revitalize the hagiographic genre. Although criticism of Unamuno's novel often centres on the question of whether Don Manuel Bueno is a believer or not, this essay concludes that it is more important to focus instead on what it is that makes Don Manuel a saint.