Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants
Voltaire, Dictionaries, and the Questions sur l'Encyclopedie
Department
Modern Languages & Literatures
College
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Date Range
2010-2011
Abstract
Today Voltaire (1694-1778) is best known for his masterpiece, "Candide", an exemplar of the genre he created, the "philosophical tale". For his contemporaries, however, Voltaire was the greatest poet and playwright of the century. Ironically, Voltaire considered "Candide" a mere trifle, while today no one except a few scholars knows his poetry, and his plays are no longer performed. In addition to philosophical tales, theatre, and poetry, during the last third of his long life Voltaire consistently worked in one other genre: dictionaries. He contributed to both the Dictionnaire de l'Academie francaise (1762 4th ed.) and the great Encyclopedie (1751-1772); his Dictionnaire philosophique, banned by the French Monarchy and placed on the Pope's Index of forbidden books, was a sensational best-seller; and his Questions sur l'Encyclopedie (1770-72) were in fact his longest work. My paper focuses on the Questions sur l'Encyclopedie, which are relatively little known. Indeed, no new edition in its own right has appeared in over two hundred years...until now. I propose to examine the new seven-volume edition in progress from Oxford University Press and the Voltaire Foundation. The question I put to the "Questions" as whether they may be considered Voltaire's magnum opus.
Conference Name
Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Conference Location
Wake Forest Univ., Winston-Salem, NC
ScholarWorks Citation
Eick, David, "Voltaire, Dictionaries, and the Questions sur l'Encyclopedie" (2010). Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants. 173.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/fsdg/173
