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Voltaire's Candide: History And Evolution

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Candide follows the journey of four youth as they explore a world that is very different from their utopian Westphalia. History and Evolution Candide has been imagined and reimagined over time. In 1953, the renowned playwright Lillian Hellman proposed to Leonard Bernstein that they adapt Voltaire 's Candide for the musical theater. Voltaire 's novella of 1758 satirized the fashionable philosophies of his day and, especially, the Catholic church whose Inquisition routinely tortured and killed "heretics" in a ghastly event known as an "Auto da Fé" ("act of faith"). Hellman observed a sinister parallel between the Inquisition 's church-sponsored purges and the "Washington Witch Trials" being waged by the House Un-American Activities
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