The European Enlightenment helped to shape the world’s society in political, social, and historical ways. 1977; 38 (1): 141-146. The Enlightenment was the start of a new era. The Enlightenment, sometimes referred to as the Age of Reason, was a confluence of ideas and activities that took place throughout the eighteenth century in Western Europe, England, and the American colonies. On the anniversary of Voltaire’s birth, learn 10 things you may not know about one of the 18th century’s most quotable and controversial thinkers. It provided plenty of Voltaire was a man of paradoxes: the bourgeois who as de Voltaire gave himself aristocratic pretensions, but who as plain Voltaire later became a hero of the Revolution; the conservative in aesthetic matters who appeared as a radical in religious and political issues. Controversial religious and political views were often expressed in the literary forms (classical tragedy, the verse satire) perfected in the seventeenth century; the ‘conservatism’ of these forms seems, to modern readers at least, to compromise the content, though this apparent traditionalism may in fact have helped Voltaire mask the originality of his enterprise: it is at least arguable that in a work such as Zaïre (1732), the form of the classical tragedy made its ideas of religious toleration more palatable. We use cookies to provide our online service. Yet this would also be a simplification, for notwithstanding his apparent literary conservatism, Voltaire was in fact a relentless reformer and experimenter with literary genres, innovative almost despite himself, particularly in the domain of prose. The new humanistic philosophy promoted the polish, French Revolution: The Influences Though the two never met in person, Voltaire was an enthusiastic acolyte of the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Voltaire died in Paris in 1778, just a few months after returning to the city for the first time in 28 years to oversee the production of one of his plays. In terms of the history of ideas, Voltaire’s single most important achievement was to have helped in the 1730s to introduce the thought of Newton and Locke to France (and so to the rest of the Continent). He became hugely wealthy by exploiting a flaw in the French lottery. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Voltaire supposedly kept up his prodigious output by spending up to 18 hours a day writing or dictating to secretaries, often while still in bed. He was, above all, the master ironist, who, perhaps more than any other writer, gave to the Enlightenment its characteristic and defining tone of voice. Enter your email address to receive news & views from the Voltaire Foundation, © 2008-2017, the Voltaire Foundation: a world leader for eighteenth-century scholarship.Designed and Produced by www.imageworks.co.uk, Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford 99 Banbury Road, OX2 6JX, UK, The Voltaire Foundation is a world leader for eighteenth-century scholarship, publishing the definitive edition of the, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Lettres sur les Anglais - Locke and the question of the soul (letter 13), Lettres sur les Anglais - Newtonianism (letters 14-17), Etudes sur le 'Traité sur la tolérance' de Voltaire. Johnson W. Voltaire after 300 Years. This new belief In short, Voltaire greatly influenced the direction of European thought in the 18th century. The contributions of Voltaire in the political and the social had a great impact in the society of his time. The two lived as a married couple from the early 1750s until his death, and they even adopted a child in 1760, when they took in a destitute young woman named Marie- Françoise Corneille. This event or period in time was attributed to major changes in science, mental preparation for the French Revolution; had inspired role in American He used something like 175 different pseudonyms in the course of his career, and his writing is characterized by a proliferation of different personae and voices. The Age of the Enlightenment raised new concepts in education, democracy, and human freedom. For more information on Voltaire, check out the two cites below to find out more. This is because his work has remained among the common people as merely literary and poetic works. 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