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Successful Use of Satire in Voltaire's Candide
Voltaire's Candide is the story of how one man's adventures affect his philosophy on life. Candide begins his journey full of optimism that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds," but he learns that it is naïve to say that good will eventually come of any evil.
Voltaire successfully uses satire as a means of conveying his opinions about many aspects of European society in the eighteenth century. He criticizes religion, the evils found in every level of society, and a philosophy of optimism when faced with an intolerable world.
Candide portrays religious persecution as one of the most worst aspects of society. Voltaire rejects the superstitious beliefs that the church endorsed. After the great earthquake in Lisbon, the church seems to think that persecuting a few innocent civilians in an auto-da-fè will prevent another disaster. The church should be the most civilized aspect of a society, but Candide is flogged in time to a musical procession, Pangloss is hanged, and two others are burned. Voltaire illustrates the irony of the church as a source of violence with the warring churchmen that Candide finds in the Jesuit state in the New World.
The Spanish priests in the New World operate a government where "the Fathers have everything, the people nothing;...they wage war against the King of Spain and the King of Portugal...they kill Spaniards" (Voltaire 53). Ironically, the priests in Paraguay also hold offices in the army. The Baron, for example, holds the title of Reverend Father Colonel. Voltaire stresses the irony of a official of the church that preaches "Thou shalt not kill" to be an army officer who's job is to murder. The cruelty of Christiani...
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...ught good out of evil, but because he has made his own happiness. "'Well said,' replied Candide, 'but we must cultivate our garden'" (Voltaire 120).
Works Cited and Consulted:
Bottiglia, William. "Candide's Garden." Voltaire: A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Durant, Will, Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part IX: The Age of Voltaire. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
Frautschi, R.L. Barron's Simplified Approach to Voltaire: Candide. New York: Barron's Educational Series, Inc., 1968.
Lowers, James K, ed. "Cliff Notes on Voltaire's Candide". Lincoln: Cliff Notes, Inc. 1965.
Richter, Peyton. Voltaire. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.
Voltaire's Candide and the Critics. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc., 1966.
Voltaire. Candide. New York: Viking Publishers, 1976.
Canadian War Museum. "The Battle of Vimy Ridge, 9-12 April 1917." WarMuseum.ca. http://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/vimy/index_e.shtml (accessed April 2, 2014).
Stephens, John. "The Canadians at Vimy Ridge." Canada & the Great War. N.p., Apr. 2014. Web. 1 May 2014.
Voltaire. Candide. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918. Project Gutenberg. Web. 11 January 2014. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19942/19942-h/19942-h.htm
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands on March 30, 1853. He was born into a middle class family that sometimes struggled financially. His grandfather was a famous preacher and his father was a minister so religion was pretty important within his family. The other passion within the family was art. His mother was an artist and three of his uncles and later his brother were art dealers. He got his first job at age 15, at his uncle’s art dealership. The fact that Vincent’s family was struggling at this time gave him the responsibility to leave school and go to work. Despite his family 's misfortune, van Gogh was fluent in 4 languages and his concern with art and religion kept growing. At the age of 20, he was transferred to the Goupil Gallery in London. It was there that he fell in love with art and English culture. He visited galleries in his spare time and in many aspects increased his understanding as a whole. In this period of time he started to fall in love with a woman named Eugenie Loyer. Vincent was prepared to ask her to marry him, but Eugenie didn’t feel the same as he did so she rejected the proposal and this caused van Gogh to suffer a mental breakdown. In this time he turned to God and threw away all unnecessary possessions except for the bible. He was fired from the Gallery for telling the customers “not to buy the worthless art.” Vincent then started teaching at a Methodist school and preached on the side a little. This was the first time in his life where he started to contemplate becoming a minister. He studied for a year planing to take the entrance exam to become a minister at the School of Theology in Amsterdam. He was denied entrance after refusing to take the Latin exam calling it a “de...
Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in the rectory of Zundert in Barbant (Burra). His father was a soft-spoken Dutch clergyman. The only thing Van Gogh got from his father, was the desire to be involved in the family church. Even at an early age, Vincent showed artistic talent but neither he nor his parents imagined that painting would take him where it did later in life. One of his first jobs came at the age of sixteen, as an art dealer’s assistant. He went to work for Goupil and Company, an art gallery where an uncle had been working for some time. Three of his father’s brothers were art dealers, and he was christened after the most distinguished of his uncles, who was manager of the Hague branch of the famous Goupil Galleries (Meier-Graefe). His parents were poor, so his rich uncle offered to take him ...
Vincent was an influential post-Impressionist painter born in 1853, Netherlands. With Theo van Gogh’s association, Vincent met reputable Impressionist painters such as Émile Henri Bernard and Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin. Impressionism served as a platform for Vincent in developing his own style . He explored with colours, a stark contrast from his usual dark and sombre style. The influence of Japonisme charmed Vincent into residing in Arles where he began painting landscapes. Thereafter, Vincent voluntarily checked into Saint-Rémy sanatorium where his works reflected strong colours and lights of the countryside around him. His manic depression and epileptic condition, led to his suicide on July 27th 1890.
Voltaire, and David Wootton. "Candide." Candide and Related Texts. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 2000. 35-42. Print
Although the shelling was aimed at the German trenches and defensive positions on the Ridge, the Canadians also shelled enemy batteries. They had become adept at locating German gun-positions and had identified the positions of 80 per cent of them. April 9th. 1917 - Easter Monday - dawned cold, with freezing rain and sleet.
How did Voltaire exploit the pre-modern era through mockery and criticism of 18th century society?
“The life of an artist is a gamble, what a gamble, it’s all or nothing.” As for post-impressionist and Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, nothing is what was received. Out of the nine-hundred paintings produced within ten years, only one was sold. Van Gogh was often ridiculed by other artists about his work and he had very few friends. One of his closest friends was his younger brother Theodorus “Theo” van Gogh. Vincent would often write to Theo and on various occasions he would write about the hardships of life, including the ways in which he was treated. In one particular letter he wrote “I wish they would only take me as I am.”
Candide is an outlandishly humorous, far-fetched tale by Voltaire satirizing the optimism espoused by the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment. It is the story of a young man’s adventures throughout the world, where he witnesses much evil and disaster. Throughout his travels, he adheres to the teachings of his tutor, Pangloss, believing that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds." Candide is Voltaire’s answer to what he saw as an absurd belief proposed by the Optimists - an easy way to rationalize evil and suffering. Though he was by no means a pessimist, Voltaire refused to believe that what happens is always for the best.The Age of Enlightenment is a term applied to a wide variety of ideas and advances in the fields of philosophy, science, and medicine. The primary feature of Enlightenment philosophy is the belief that people can actively work to create a better world. A spirit of social reform characterized the political ideology of Enlightenment philosophers. While Voltaire’s Candide is heavily characterized by the primary concerns of the Enlightenment, it also criticizes certain aspects of the movement. It attacks the idea that optimism, which holds that rational thought can inhibit the evils perpetrated by human beings.
In Candide, Voltaire sought to point out the fallacy of Gottfried Leibniz's theory of optimism and the hardships brought on by the resulting inaction toward the evils of the world. Voltaire's use of satire, and its techniques of exaggeration and contrast highlight the evil and brutality of war and the world in general when men are meekly accepting of their fate.
Voltaire, Francois-Marie Arouet de. “Candide.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Gen. ed. Martin Puchner. Shoter 3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 100-59. Print.
Vincent van Gogh was born in the Netherlands on 1853. At the age of 27 is when he truly began his interest in art and soon expanded it into a career, even though only having another 10 more years to live. While traveling to Paris in 1886 with his brother Theo, Vincent learned many knew techniques and movements of art which he later used in his own art work. It was not until the very last two and a half years of Vincent’s life that the world truly saw what he was capable of creating with his hands and mind, being in that state of mind in which he was really disturbed and his despair was deepening. Some of his mental and, as well as physical, health includes temporal lobe epilepsy, bipolar disorder and hypergraphia, according to Van Gogh Gallery, 2015.
Vincent van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all time. He was born in 1853, in the town Groot-Zundert, Netherlands. He inherited his artistic abilities from his mother, who was also a very talented artist by the name of Anna Cornelia Carbentus. Van Gogh is well known for having psychological problems. His problems began at a really young age and it is something that he battled with all throughout his life, and it is revealed in his artwork. Although van Gogh is one of the most famous artists of all time, very few people were familiar with his work until after his death.