Political discourse in Portugal during the 18th century: the case of Filinto Elísio

Abstract

In a time strongly controlled by inquisitorial and police censorship, and with no past to justify it, Father Francisco Manuel do Nascimento built, from the third quarter of the 18th century, a strongly ideological and committed political discourse; nourished by the authors who inspired the French Revolution and by his own experience, the poet, escaped from the Inquisition and exiled in Paris for many years, issued in his poems and notes an entirely new and fierce form of political intervention in Portugal, anticipating a new bias that literature in times of liberalism would come to consecrate. The aim of this article is to expose this characteristic of the philanthropic work, which also aims to demonstrate the poet's whole-ideological-political discourse.