Optimism In Candide

The long 18th century was known as a period of the great evolution of the novel, a genre which was known in France as “roman” because of its roots in the medieval romance while in England it was known as novel (Pacheco and Johnson 176). Many brilliant writers appeared in that period, one of them was François-Marie Arouet which was known then, by the name Voltaire. He was born in 1694 and grew up in a wealthy family who educated him at Jesuit school in Paris. His family and specially his father who was a notary wanted him to be a law student like him so he became a reluctant law student to satisfy his father’s will (172). From 1717 Voltaire occupied himself to write a satire against the ruler which is a writing that mocks the failings of the

Voltaire’s name did not appear on the book he hid his character from the readers behind the name of Doctor Ralph, then in 1768 he announced publicly of being the author of the book. Later on a new edition of the book was published in 1761 which included new paragraphs and some rewriting (173). Voltaire was a great comic writer, he wrote his book in a comic way because he thinks that literature should be interesting and also entertaining. And for that reason a musical version of Candide was produced on Broadway in 1956 (173). Voltaire uses several techniques in his novel to stand against the philosophy of optimism, one of the techniques is the “travel writing” which shape a genre that is descriptive and narrative. This technique shows if this story is real or imagined and if includes a person or number of persons moving from one place to another, this kind of technique makes the travelers compare between their own world and the worlds they are travelling to it also leads them to pass negative judgments. In the 5th century this technique was used Herodotus who is interested in the religion and morals of the countries which he passed (174). Travellers’s tales were used for another use in the renaissance by Thomas More in his “Utopia” which means “An imagined place or state of things in which everything is