Candide and Other Works (WW)

With an Introduction and Notes by James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in French, University of Kent Candide (1759) is a bright, colourful literary firework display of a novella. With sparkling wit and biting humour, Voltaire hits several targets with fierce and comic satire: organised religion, the overweening pride of aristocrats, merchants` greed, colonial ambition and the hopeless complacency of Leibnizian philosophy that believes `all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds`. Through this rites of passage story, with his central character, Candide, a naive and impressionable young man, Voltaire attacks the social ills of his day, which remarkably remain as pertinent now as ever. Zadig is a tale of love and detection. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by this story when he created C. Auguste Dupin in `The Murders in the Rue Morgue`, a story which established the modern detective fiction genre. The Ingenu recounts how a young man raised by Huron Indians discover the ways of Europe. Nanine is a sharp three act comedy concerned with marital dilemmas. In all these works Voltaire manages to combine humour with trenchant satire in a highly entertaining fashion.