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Showing posts with the label French Literature

Voltaire - A lot of Voltaire (Small Works List)

 I am chiming in here to say that I really messed up when I jumped into Voltaire. A story in three parts. First, I pulled Voltaire from the Small Works List because, you know...why not? So, I wasn't sure what I was going to do here because I have read Candide before and it seemed to me that Candide is the document that you are supposed to read when you read Voltaire. So, I pulled the name and I thought, surely there will be something else that I should read to make myself understand this human being better. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this pursuit I have been reading classic literature since high school and have had an on again off again relationship with the canon as most traditionally expressed. What I find now is that I still have this sort of semi-fraught relationship with specific characters of the canon and I can think whatever I like about these people. I read Voltaire in high school and did not really understand what was going on then, I read it again recently and real