Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire first published in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Optimism (1947). It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds".
Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.
François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plumeVoltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher famous for his wit, his criticism of Christianity—especially the Roman Catholic Church—as well as his advocacy of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He was well known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770).
Jean François de Saint-Lambert was a French poet, philosopher and military officer.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1737.
Jacques Delille was a French poet, Freemason and translator. He was born at Aigueperse in Auvergne and died in Paris.
Louis Racine was a French poet of the Age of the Enlightenment.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his work L'homme machine.
18th-century French literature is French literature written between 1715, the year of the death of King Louis XIV of France, and 1798, the year of the coup d'État of Bonaparte which brought the Consulate to power, concluded the French Revolution, and began the modern era of French history. This century of enormous economic, social, intellectual and political transformation produced two important literary and philosophical movements: during what became known as the Age of Enlightenment, the Philosophes questioned all existing institutions, including the church and state, and applied rationalism and scientific analysis to society; and a very different movement, which emerged in reaction to the first movement; the beginnings of Romanticism, which exalted the role of emotion in art and life.
The Abbé Pierre François Guyot-Desfontaines was a French journalist, translator and popular historian.
Jacques-André Naigeon was a French artist, atheist–materialist philosopher, editor and man of letters best known for his contributions to the Encyclopédie and for reworking Baron d'Holbach's and Diderot's manuscripts.
In Letter on the Blind for the Use of those who can see, Denis Diderot takes on the question of visual perception, a subject that, at the time, experienced a resurgence of interest due to the success of medical procedures that allowed surgeons to operate on cataracts and certain cases of blindness from birth. Speculations were then numerous upon what the nature and use of vision was, and how much perception, habit, and experience allow individuals to identify forms in space, to perceive distances and to measure volumes, or to distinguish a realistic work of art from reality.
Theodore Besterman founded the Voltaire Foundation, a research department of the University of Oxford, in the 1970s. It publishes the definitive edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire, as well as Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, a monograph series devoted to the eighteenth century, and the correspondences (letters) of several key French thinkers. Directed by Professor Nicholas Cronk, it forms part of Oxford's Humanities Division.
Jacob Vernet was a prominent theologian in Geneva, Republic of Geneva, who believed in a rationalist approach to religion. He was called "the most important and influential Genevan pastor of his day".
The Complete Works of Voltaire is the first critical edition of the totality of Voltaire's writings arranged chronologically. The project was started by the bibliographer and translator Theodore Besterman who only lived to see the first two volumes published. It is currently published by the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford.
Anne-Marie Fiquet du Boccage, née Le Page, was an 18th-century French writer, poet, and playwright.
Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations is a work by the French writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire, published for the first time in 1756. It discusses the history of Europe before Charlemagne until the dawn of the age of Louis XIV, also addressing the colonies and the East.
Questions sur les Miracles, also known as Lettres sur les Miracles is a publication by the French philosopher and author Voltaire, written in 1765 and first published as a series of imagined letters by various people.
Charles-Jacques-Louis-Auguste Rochette de La Morlière, called "Le Chevalier", was an 18th-century French playwright.
