Voltaire’s Candide or Optimism was written in 1759, during what was commonly known as the enlightenment era. The book addresses many issues including human nature, happiness, optimism, pessimism, belief and state. These features and issues are provocative and at times controversial but they give the reader an insider’s knowledge and an insightful perspective, adding context and background. This context is helpful and somewhat refreshing as Voltaire uses his work to address several issues that many stories both past and present have elected to disregard.
This essay will be exploring the relevance of this context in relation to the novel as a whole, while paying particular attention to chapter 10 of Candide. It will then go on to analyse the many narrative techniques used by Voltaire when composing Candide. The final part of this essay will be exploring the way Voltaire controls the language he uses within his construction of Candide and the distinctive features of the language used.
However, as I have stated I will first be examining the context and historical background that is relevant to Candide and the way that this illuminates the readers understanding of the novel and more prominently, of chapter 10.
In 1759 when Candide
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Within chapter 10 Voltaire uses very descriptive and exaggerated words to describe the terrible things that have happened to Cunégonde and the old woman. For example he writes as Cunégonde, ‘Alas, my good woman,’ she said to her, ‘unless you have been raped by two Bulgars, been stabbed twice in the stomach, had two castles demolished, had the throats of two mothers and two fathers slit before your very eyes, and watched two lovers being flogged in an auto-da-fé, I really cannot see that you have the advantage over me; to which I might add that I was born a baroness, with seventy-two quarterings to my coat of arms, and have been put to work in a