CRITICISM

Beck, Ervin. “Voltaire's Candide.” Explicator 57, no. 4 (1999): 203-04.

Discusses the role of Cacambo in Candide as a type of golden mean.

Carlson, Marvin. Voltaire and the Theatre of the Eighteenth Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998, 186 p.

Gives a history of Voltaire's theatrical career (1694-1791), particularly as it illuminates the eighteenth-century theatrical culture in France.

Dawson, Deirdre. Voltaire's Correspondence: An Epistolary Novel. New York: Peter Lang, 1994, 189 p.

Approaches Voltaire's letters as a form of literature, focusing on his correspondence with Mme Denis, the Tronchin family, and d'Alembert.

Howells, Robin. Disabled Powers: A Reading of Voltaire's Contes. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993, 192 p.

Applies Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque to the contes, and describes a paradigm of the conte hero's journey.

———. “Pleasure Principles: Tales, Infantile Naming, and Voltaire.” Modern Language Review 92, no. 2 (1997): 295-307.

Takes a psychoanalytic approach to naming in Voltaire's contes, identifying patterns and suggesting a connection to Freud's oral and anal stages.

———. “Rousseau and Voltaire: A Literary Comparison of Two ‘Professions de Foi.’” French Studies 49, no. 4 (1995): 397-409.

Compares the fictional professions of faith in Rousseau's Émile and Voltaire's Histoire de Jenni.

McKenzie, D. F. “Mea Culpa: Voltaire's Retraction of His Comments Critical of Congreve.” Review of English Studies 49 (1998): 461-65.

Counters the critical assumption that Voltaire maintained a distaste for the work of English playwright William Congreve; demonstrates Voltaire's change of heart.

Schorske, Carl E. “The Idea of the City in European Thought: Voltaire to Spengler.” In Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism, pp. 37-55. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Begins with a discussion of Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Fichte as foundational Enlightenment philosophers who praised the city as a site of progress; also discusses darker visions of the city in the nineteenth century.

Weinbrot, Howard D. “Censoring Johnson in France: Johnson and Suard on Voltaire: A New Document.” Review of English Studies 45 (1994): 230-33.

Addresses Voltaire's views on Shakespeare in the context of French-English literary relations and Samuel Johnson's “Preface to Shakespeare.”

Wokler, Robert. “The Subtextual Reincarnation of Voltaire and Rousseau.” American Scholar 67, no. 2 (1999): 55-64.

Considers the personality and style of Voltaire biographer Theodore Besterman, who also edited Voltaire's correspondence, and their relationship in editing Voltaire's and Rousseau's letters.

Additional coverage of Voltaire's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults, Vol. 13; DISCovering Authors; DISCovering Authors 3.0; DISCovering Authors: British Edition; DISCovering Authors: Canadian Edition; DISCovering Authors : Dramatists Module and Most Studied Authors Module; European Writers, Vol. 4; Guide to French Literature, Vol. Beginnings to 1789; Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Vol. 14; Novels for Students, Vol. 7; Reference Guide to World Literature, Ed. 2; Short Story Criticism, Vol. 12; World Literature Criticism.