In The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, how is the Goya and the Enlightenment discussed?
Goya’s Los Caprichos echo key themes of the Enlightenment, particularly the prioritization of freedom and expression over custom and tradition, and the emphasis on knowledge and intellect over ignorance. Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters presents a similar concept; this work praises reason as a work of imagination, such that it is on the basis of the imagination that reason "sleeps", and the abundance of imagination with an absence of reasoning and logic may produce "monsters". One of the work’s critics writes, "[The animals] symbolize the world’s 'vulgar prejudices' and 'harmful ideas commonly believed'. Goya, borrowing the penetrating vision of the lynx, intended to expose them to light by depicting them so that we can recognize and fight them, perpetuating the solid testimony of the truth... When we are asleep we do not see, nor can we denounce, the monsters of ignorance and vice." This interpretation of The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters reflects the ideals of the Enlightenment by denouncing ignorance and highlighting the importance of awareness. 
This conventional interpretation of this plate--an endorsement of Enlightenment ideology, translating sueño as "sleep" rather than the equally justifiable translation as "dream"--remains for the most part silent about motives for its placement in the center of the series. Interpreted as The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Plate 43 might have made an ideal frontispiece for the plates to follow in the first half, as humans beings do exhibit monstrous behavior without using "reason." This would then be a usual Enlightenment criticism of society. By placing Plate 43 in the middle, as it is, what follows in the second half is also an Enlightenment criticism of society--but a very dark satire of the first half. It is the Enlightenment gone mad, run amok; it begins with The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters. John J. Ciofalo has written: "Truly, however, placing it in the middle made its meaning unmistakable and unleashed in Los Caprichos a potent, even explosive, narrative power...the gateway from the "dream" of reason into the nightmare of reason, indeed, of madness." Goya turns the light of the Enlightenment back on itself and here are where the monsters are found.
satire Enlightenment