Textos e contextos ilustrados: as avaliações de Luíz Antônio Verney, Antônio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches e Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo sobre o Portugal setecentista

Abstract

In this thesis I analyze different texts, authors and the contexts which are present in the Portuguese illustrated movement of the eighteenth century. Using an approach of Intellectual History advocated by Dominick LaCapra, I evaluate the relationship between the Portuguese illustrated texts and their possible contexts in the eighteenth Century. Thus, through the texts and historical contexts raised by each author, I attempt to build an analysis, based on Intellectual History, which takes into account their real intentions; the possible relations that can be established between the texts and the authors’ biographies; and how the authors' texts can dialogue with each other. I propose the study of the Portuguese Illustration, more specifically the vision that some Portuguese thinkers had of their own nation in the eighteenth century and how, through their writings, they criticized and offered solutions in the different fields of the Portuguese culture, namely: education, politics and economy. Therefore, I choose to analyze in this thesis the works of three Portuguese illustrators: Antônio Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (1699-1783), Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello (1699/1782) and Luís Antônio Verney (1713/1792). I try to understand what diagnosis they made of the Portuguese nation under the influence of the lights. Each one, in his own way, treated different elements of the Portuguese culture - be it through social, political or economic relations - which they identified as decisive problems to be considered. In face of their diagnoses it became apparent that they did not present an anti- religious or heretical criticism, but used the enlightened ideas to reinforce monarchical power within the absolutist model. In addition, from these ideas, they proposed reforms and/or replacement to programs in order to promote the "modernization" of Portugal in the ways they considered pertinent to the eighteenth-century reality of their nation.