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Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. [7] Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally.
Précis du siècle de Louis XV (Short history of the Age of Louis XV) is a historical work by the French philosopher and author Voltaire, first published in its own right 1768. [1] Celebrating the progress of Enlightenment ideas and the retreat of prejudice , it comments on cultural, economic and technological progress made in the Kingdom of ...
Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment is a monographic series which has been published since 1955. [1] Originally edited by Theodore Besterman , [ 2 ] [ 3 ] the series now comprises more than 600 books - edited volumes and monographs, in either English or French - on diverse topics related to the Enlightenment or the eighteenth century.
It publishes the definitive edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Œuvres complètes de Voltaire), as well as Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (previously SVEC, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), a monograph series devoted to the eighteenth century, and the correspondences (letters) of several key French ...
Voltaire argues that while this sect includes some of the day's most important thinkers (including Newton and Locke), this is not enough to persuade the common man that it is logical. According to Voltaire, men prefer to follow the teachings of "wretched authors" such as Martin Luther , John Calvin or Huldrych Zwingli .
Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse of l'Encyclopédie provides a history of the Enlightenment which comprises a chronological list of developments in the realm of knowledge—of which the Encyclopédie forms the pinnacle. [153] In 1783, Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of ...
The period covered by the history corresponds neither to the 17th century nor the reign of Louis XIV, running from the last years of Cardinal Richelieu to the years after Louis XIV's death, in 36 chapters. [6] Voltaire described this as the age in which the arts and philosophy achieved their greatest perfection.
The Essai is a work of Enlightenment philosophy as much as of history. It urges the active rejection of superstition and fable , and the need to replace them with knowledge based on reason. [ 3 ] Voltaire traced common themes across various human cultures and languages, explained by a shared reality but also by shared human failings, such as ...