Sociedad, política, religión y costumbres en el Viaje a Italia de Moratín

Abstract

This article analyses the notes made by Moratín in his Viaje a Italia (1793-1796), collated with his personal diary and his letters, regarding the functioning of governments, their institutions and their laws; the consequences of the French Revolution; economic corruption; religious issues (the controversies surrounding ceremonies, trafficking of relics, saints and bulls, or Pope Joan); social problems: nobility and clergy, vagabonds, prostitutes and pimps; and customs and traditions (dress, feasts, linguistic peculiarities and particular traits of the principal population groups). These observations draw on Enlightened thinking, older conventions and liberty of thought, in free, ironic, dynamic and modern writing that is among the most valuable from 18th-century Spain.

Keywords

• Leandro Fernández de Moratín
• Viaje a Italia
• politics
• religion
• society
• traditions and customs