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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.
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.
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. [150] In 1783, Mendelssohn referred to Enlightenment as a process by which man was educated in the use of ...
The Enlightenment also fostered the rise of public spheres where education, particularly secular education, played a crucial role. Intellectuals like Voltaire and Rousseau argued for educational reforms that would free learning from ecclesiastical control and make it accessible to a broader segment of society. The growth of literacy, the ...
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 ...
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 came to embody the Enlightenment. French philosophy in the 18th century was deeply political. It was heavily imbued with Enlightenment principles and many of its philosophers became critics of church and state and promoters of rationality and progress. These philosophers would come to have a deep influence on the politics and ...
In the 1720s, Voltaire exiled himself in England, where he absorbed Locke's ideas. The philosophers were, in general, less hostile to monarchical rule than they were to that of the clergy and the nobility. [19] In his defence of Jean Calas, Voltaire defended Royal justice against the excesses of fantastical provincial courts. [20]