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Wesley Coffman
François-Marie Arouet : Voltaire
Before the time of Voltaire, romantic poetry was the popular medium. The major poet of this era was Jean Bouhier. Voltaire wrote in every style of literary medium, making him a prolific writer. His works include authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 20,000 letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets.
Voltaire was influenced simply by society and its actions. He thought of the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax" or the tithe helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries. Voltaire gained experience by being a lawyer’s apprentice first in Paris, and then in the provinces.
A new style of writing, one that fully expressed all emotions towards society, is what Voltaire loved to portray. Many of Voltaire's prose works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as polemics. Candide attacked religious and philosophical optimism, L'Homme aux quarante ecus expressed certain social and political ways of the time, Zadig portrayed the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy, and some were written to deride the Bible. Voltaire fiercely opposed Christianity and its beliefs, poking in his writings many stereotypes of the religion, and any faults which it showed. He claimed that the Gospels were fabricated and Jesus did not exist - that they were produced by those who wanted to create God in their own image and were full of discrepancies. Voltaire expressed his views on race, mostly in his work Essai sur les mœurs, holding that black people, which he called "animals", were a peculiar species of human because of what he saw as great differences from other humans, both physically and mentally.
Voltaire influenced many people whose styles of writings changed to variety of styles both new and old - ancient Greek poetry, satire, contemporary poetry and philosophy.
François-Marie Arouet : Voltaire
Before the time of Voltaire, romantic poetry was the popular medium. The major poet of this era was Jean Bouhier. Voltaire wrote in every style of literary medium, making him a prolific writer. His works include authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 20,000 letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets.
Voltaire was influenced simply by society and its actions. He thought of the French bourgeoisie to be too small and ineffective, the aristocracy to be parasitic and corrupt, the commoners as ignorant and superstitious, and the church as a static force useful only as a counterbalance since its "religious tax" or the tithe helped to create a strong backing for revolutionaries. Voltaire gained experience by being a lawyer’s apprentice first in Paris, and then in the provinces.
A new style of writing, one that fully expressed all emotions towards society, is what Voltaire loved to portray. Many of Voltaire's prose works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as polemics. Candide attacked religious and philosophical optimism, L'Homme aux quarante ecus expressed certain social and political ways of the time, Zadig portrayed the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy, and some were written to deride the Bible. Voltaire fiercely opposed Christianity and its beliefs, poking in his writings many stereotypes of the religion, and any faults which it showed. He claimed that the Gospels were fabricated and Jesus did not exist - that they were produced by those who wanted to create God in their own image and were full of discrepancies. Voltaire expressed his views on race, mostly in his work Essai sur les mœurs, holding that black people, which he called "animals", were a peculiar species of human because of what he saw as great differences from other humans, both physically and mentally.
Voltaire influenced many people whose styles of writings changed to variety of styles both new and old - ancient Greek poetry, satire, contemporary poetry and philosophy.