Goya's Enlightenment Protagonist: A Quixotic Dreamer Of Reason
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A very dominant theme in John T. Coifalo’s Goya’s Enlightenment Protagonist: A Quixotic Dreamer of Reason is remarkably unrealistic rationales1. This is emphasized by Coifalo’s consistent reference to Don Quixote; a story about an unnamed member of the Spanish nobility who becomes completely obsessed with the revival of chivalry and righting the wrongs of humanity under the façade of Don Quixote. Quixote is depicted as exceedingly idealistic and naïve. With this reference woven throughout the entire journal entry, one could draw the conclusion that Francisco Goya was also impractical in his way of thinking. The journal begins with a literary reference to Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, published in 1886 by author Robert Louis Stevenson,…show more content… In continuing paragraphs, Coifalo goes into detail on a few of Goya’s etchings – specifically El sueio de la razon produce monstruos (Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) – and the relation to Don Quixote. The author suggests that Goya’s Sueño, artwork was originally a self-portrait. However the etching was revised to a faceless and nameless writer who was asleep at their desk. This could be significant of Goya breaking the boundary between writer and artist as his artworks grew more satirical. The argument can be made that the remaking of the Sueño was essentially representative of Goya’s connection between literary and visual artwork; one could even go so far as to suggest that Sueño was comparable to a visual autobiography. Parallel to that theory, the similarities between the lack of identification of the new subject to the etching, and the namelessness of Don Quixote cannot and should not be ignored. Is Goya associating himself with Don Quixote? Coifalo states in his concluding paragraph that the original description of Don Quixote matches very closely with Goya’s description of his protagonist in Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. Additionally, it is important to take into consideration that by 1793 Francisco Goya was deaf due to a mysterious illness2. Onward from that point, Goya’s artistic focus shifted to the human