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Candide and other stories (New edition)

Part of the Wordsworth classics series
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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.

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Product Details
Wordsworth Editions Ltd
1840227303 / 9781840227307
Paperback / softback
843.5
15/06/2014
United Kingdom
English
Classics
401 pages
20 cm
General (US: Trade) Learn More
Translated from the French.