This new edition also includes a verse tale based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, in which we discover that most elusive of secrets: What Pleases the Ladies.ĪBOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull - do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. We must cultivate our garden, for there is certainly room for improvement.Ĭandide is the most famous of Voltaire's 'philosophical tales', in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. There are no grounds for his daft theory of Optimism. Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the full horror and injustice of this 'best of all possible worlds' - the Old and the New - before finally accepting that his old philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss has got it all wrong.

'If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?'

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In other words, Candide reflects Voltaire's ambivalent state of mind around the time he wrote the tale: a relative sense of personal happiness or peace associated. It also develops an interesting, and paradoxical, thesis regarding the relationship between Candide and the evolution of Voltaire's life and career: 'The origins of Candide are to be found rather in Voltaire's happiness than his despair' (xxv). This choice of related texts, along with the translator's introduction, provides a rich background against which to read Voltaire's masterpiece.ĭavid Wootton's introduction is very useful and does an excellent job of situating Candide in the context of late-seventeenth, early-eighteenth-century debates about philosophical optimism, particularly with reference to such authors as P. Rousseau to Voltaire on the topic of optimism. Pope's Essay on Man, and a letter from J.-J.

IN ADDITION TO CANDIDE, this little volume includes two earlier philosophical tales, 'The History of the Travels of Scarmentado' and 'The Comforter Comforted,' the 'Poem on the Lisbon Disaster,' the article 'Well (All is)' from the Philosophical Dictionary, a short feminist piece entitled 'Wives Obey Your Husbands,' and excerpts from Voltaire's correspondence, as well as selections from G. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

Translated, with an introduction, by David Wootton.

Candide text