The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
In Voltaire's British visitors, Sir Gavin de Beer and André-Michel Rousseau have collected accounts of one hundred and fifty visits by British travellers to Voltaire in Switzerland, where he spent the last years of his life on the shores of Lake Geneva. One hundred and twenty-three of these visitors have been identified, and they range from men as young as fifteen on a Grand Tour to Thomas Pitt, brother of William, and Edward Gibbon. As the Seven Years' War made Switzerland, rather than France, part of the normal route for Englishmen making their way to Italy, Geneva became a destination for more and more British travellers, and many of these, whether they held letters of recommendation from people known to Voltaire, or had merely read his work, wanted to see the famous Frenchman, their motives ranging, as Rousseau puts it in his introduction, from 'very superficial curiosity to downright admiration'. The accounts run from a bare mention of a visit, consisting of a few lines, to fascinating accounts of lively conversations with Voltaire about politics, religion and English literature and descriptions of his home at Ferney with its chapel and little playhouse. John Morgan in 1764, visiting with a Mr Samuel Powel, writes of his surprise when Voltaire saw a little dog in the room, turned to Mr Powel and 'as I thought, a little abruptly ask'd him, what think you of that little dog; has he any Soul or not, & what do the People in England now think of the Soul.' James Boswell, who stayed for three days in 1764, calls Voltaire's home an 'enchanted castle' and records conversation ranging from impassioned Biblical debate to Voltaire's comment on Scotland's painters when Boswell told him of the failure of an Academy of painting there: 'No; to paint well it is necessary to have warm feet. It's hard to paint when your feet are cold.' Together, these one hundred and fifty vignettes offer a fascinating and unusual glimpse into Voltaire's life from 1754 to 1778 through immediate and personal accounts of his conversation, hospitality and domestic life.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.
No two comedies of Voltaire are alike: the breadth and diversity of his comic dramaturgy in terms of form, technique, theme, characterisation and tone, are revealed in this first critical analysis and systematic reassessment of Voltaire’s eighteen comedies in their contemporary theatrical, literary and intellectual contexts. This study also exposes the fundamental unity of Voltaire’s comic theatre, which lies in the plays’ status as innovative, experimental works written in creative dialogue with, and fruitful opposition to, the contemporary trend towards serious, sentimental comedy.Voltaire wrote his comedies over more than forty years (1725-1769), when comedy was undergoing significant redefinition as a genre. Typically dismissed as un-dramatic, sentimental, overtly didactic and so of limited interest today, his comedies emerge from this study as a series of vigorous explorations in the many possibilities of the comic genre. Voltaire wrote with the example of Molière and the seventeenth-century comic tradition constantly in mind, but at the same time he diverged from that tradition in pioneering ways, constantly testing the limits of generic convention and audience expectation. In demonstrating the blend of tradition and innovation at the heart of Voltaire’s aesthetics of comic drama, this book contributes to a remapping of the history of eighteenth-century French comedy. It also leads to a new understanding of Voltaire’s comic aesthetics more broadly: his comedies are a substantial, complex and vital part of his literary career, and studying them helps us to revise our view of the author of satirical contes, the dry wit whose distinctive literary mode can appear to be destructive irony. Viewed in the light of his comic theatre, the familiar Voltaire wears a significantly different expression.
Sait-on bien quel historien singulier ce fut que l’auteur du Siècle de Louis XIV? Voltaire a si peu déguisé son parti pris qu’on finirait par ne plus apercevoir ce qu’a d’insolite sa méthode. ‘Quiconque pense, écrit-il dans l’introduction du Siècle, et ce qui est encore plus rare, quiconque a du goût ne compte que quatre siècles dans l’histoire du monde.’ Sélectionner ainsi son objet, c’est postuler ce qu’il faudra prouver, c’est revendiquer a priori une faculté de goût dont l’histoire est tenue de manifester la supériorité. L’historien n’a donc pas à expliquer, il doit peindre, c’est le mot même de Voltaire. Il paraît superflu de remonter aux causes. Les faits parlent assez clairement: le Grand Siècle compte dans l’histoire universelle par la Révolution qu’il y produit, l’avènement d’une civilisation du goût, jugée telle, il est vrai, d’après des critères qu’il se pourrait que Voltaire eût empruntés à l’époque en cause.C’est afin de célébrer le 250e anniversaire de ce qui fut un événement pour les contemporains, la publication du Siècle de Louis XIV, que le Centre d’étude de la langue et de la littérature françaises des dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne organisa le colloque ‘Voltaire et le Grand Siècle’. Le volume présent rassemble vingt-neuf études traitant de la méthode de l’historien, des leçons de cette histoire nouvelle, de la ‘philosophie’ que Voltaire tire de l’observation minutieuse du matériau historique, ainsi que de la politique religieuse de Louis XIV. Voltaire voit des taches sur la gloire du Roi-Soleil.
Voltaire’s historical works reflect his own changing roles and preoccupations from conteur to campaigner. His groundbreaking historical output of thirty-eight texts, composed throughout his long career as a writer, is now receiving renewed critical attention. In the first study to explore the whole range of Voltaire’s writings in this domain, Síofra Pierse looks at the irreducible ambiguity of the term histoire, both factual truth and the way it is represented – ‘history’ and ‘story’. She discusses how Voltaire’s theories of history interact with other, more literary considerations, and analyses how a search for truth overlaps with a desire to create a compelling narrative that engages the reader in a deeper, collaborative, and polemical project. In Voltaire historiographer: narrative paradigms, Síofra Pierse brings to light how the philosophe exploits the potential of history not simply to record the past, but to influence the present and shape the future.
The 1760s was a pivotal decade for the philosophes. In the late 1750s their cause had been at a low ebb, but it was transformed in the eyes of public opinion by such events as the Calas affair in the early 1760s. By the end of the decade, the philosophes were dominant in key literary institutions such as the Comédie-Française and the Académie française, and their enlightened programme became more widely accepted.Many of the essays in this volume focus on Voltaire, revealing him as a writer of fiction and polemic who, during this period, became increasingly interested in questions of justice and jurisprudence. Other essays examine the literary activities of Voltaire’s contemporaries, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Chamfort, Rétif, Sedaine and Marmontel.It is no exaggeration to describe the 1760s as Voltaire’s decade. It is he more than any other author who set the agenda and held the public’s attention during this seminal period for the development of Enlightenment ideas and values. Voltaire’s dominance of the 1760s can be summed up in a single phrase: it is in these years that he became the ‘patriarch of Ferney’.
Voltaire’s turbulent relationship with the courts of law of ancien régime France reveals much about his social and political thought, but its representation in many studies of the philosophe is often simplistic and distorted. In the first in-depth study of Voltaire and the parlements James Hanrahan looks afresh at this relationship to offer a new and challenging analysis of Voltaire’s political thought and activity.Through examination of Voltaire’s evolving representation of the parlements in his writings from La Henriade to the Histoire du parlement, Hanrahan calls into question the dominant historiography of extremes that pits Voltaire ‘defender of the oppressed’ against ‘self-interested’ magistrates. He presents a much more nuanced view of the relationship, from which the philosophe emerges as a highly pragmatic figure whose political philosophy was inseparable from his business or humanitarian interests.In Voltaire and the ‘parlements’ of France Hanrahan opens up analysis of Voltaire’s politics, and provides a new context for future study of the writer as both historiographer and campaigner for justice.
Bien qu’il participe à une redéfinition de la pratique historiographique à l’Age classique, on s’est peu interrogé sur l’art de ‘Voltaire l’historien’, et on a souvent résumé sa conception de l’histoire et de la politique au rôle majeur joué par les ‘grands hommes’. Il s’agit ici de mettre à l’épreuve une telle conception, et de faire valoir la complexité de la lecture voltairienne de l’histoire.M. Méricam-Bourdet découvre et examine dans les écrits historiques de Voltaire une vision réfléchie du pouvoir et des enjeux du politique, bien que l’auteur lui-même n’en ait jamais proposé de théorisation systématique: pour comprendre le déroulement historique, il faut prendre en compte l’action non seulement de quelques souverains, mais aussi celle, collective, des peuples. Tout aussi révélatrice est l’attention que porte Voltaire aux rapports de pouvoir qui infléchissent les politiques contemporaines: relations internationales et commerce se retrouvent au premier plan d’une œuvre qui envisage la politique comme un phénomène global.En raison de ces multiples enjeux, l’œuvre historique de Voltaire est alors en prise avec une actualité politique et polémique. Par son analyse de cette tonalité spécifique, M. Méricam-Bourdet remet en question ce qu’est pour nous l’écriture de l’histoire au dix-huitième siècle.
