Mary Ellison Barlow, Brigham Young University
Humanities
In the 15th and 16th centuries of the Portuguese golden age was followed by a period of decline in the 17th and 18th centuries. For a majority of Western Europe, this latter period heralded the age of Enlightenment and brought with it a cultural movement of reason and individualism that changed the history of the world. There is a vacuity surrounding Portugal in respect to the role and level of influence it had in the movement of the Enlightenment. The purpose of this study is to discover how Portugal received enlightened European thinking and how the enlightened world saw Portugal. This study will include the affect the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 influenced Enlightenment thinking, foreign and domestic. We will also analyze the reception of ones such as Mozart and Voltaire and their corresponding works, and how these ideas influenced Portuguese society.