Dare to Look: Manuel Godoy’s Secret Cabinet and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Spain

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2024
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Haverford College. Department of History
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Thesis
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The History Department Senior Thesis Prize
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eng
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Open access
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on Manuel Godoy (prime minister of Spain, 1792-1798), and the court of enlightened thinkers in his milieu, which included the painter Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and the authors Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760-1828) and Pedro Montengón y Paret (1745-1824). Goya’s famous Maja desnuda — a work commissioned by Godoy himself but later investigated by the Spanish Inquisition — demonstrates how this court was simultaneously elite and embattled, privileged and persecuted. Godoy, a non-royal prime minister, possessed a highly-constructed sense of legitimacy and relied on leveraging artistic patronage as a device of social and political ascension. This thesis views Enlightenment through a transnational lens, rejecting outmoded historiographies which cast Enlightenment as a catechism of beliefs unique to Franco-German contexts. It seeks to understand the nature of Spanish Enlightenment, a contested category, and Godoy’s role in defining it. Godoy is a confronting and polarizing figure: his attested protection of enlightened thinking was inseparable from his personal will to power. Simultaneously, Godoy shielded and supported Spain’s greatest minds — forming a ‘shadow cabinet’ of enlightened thinkers — while paving the way for Napoleon’s occupation of his country in return for promised political benefit. Godoy provokes with the tensions in his politics and aesthetics — a monarchist and elitist on the one hand, a friend to progressive thinking and the advancement of the arts on the other. This thesis examines how Godoy fomented Enlightenment in Spain as a project inextricably linked to his own aggressive ascent: by utilizing the royal stratagems of sala reservada and courtly favor, Godoy promoted a despotic style of Enlightenment which pushed the boundaries of Spanish expression while expanding his power within the monarchy.
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