Candide Elements of Satire1

• Satire is a genre with a set of conventions and techniques.

2. Genre

Works of literature often share conventions of characterization, setting, style, and plot through and against which they develop themes. Knowledge of these conventions can enrich interpretation .

Candide Elements of Satire2

• Satire mocks human behavior and attitudes to deflate pretension, expose fallacy, or suggest reform.

The Biggest Questions

• What does the work say? How do you know?

• What do you think of what the work says? Why do you think so?

Candide -

Use of Satirical Techniques

Narrative Style

Philosophical and Moral Issues

Some Questions

• What satirical techniques and conventions appear in Candide and how are they used?

• What universal failings of human institutions, foibles, and flaws are the targets of Voltaire satire?

• What do these techniques and conventions add to interpretation?

• The tone of the work is flippant, even playful. Terrible things happen, yet the writing remains upbeat and light.

Verbal Irony is found in the contrast between the tone of the work and the content. The story presents abundant evidence of genuine evil with language that either doesn’t express moral outrage or misdirects it.

Task: Describe the context and content of two passages in which verbal irony creates a mismatch between tone and content. How is the tone of the passage created?

Dramatic Irony is found in the discrepancy between what is obviously true and what the characters believe to be true. The story contrasts genuine evil with obviously flawed human perceptions and ideas about evil.

Task: Describe the context and content of two passages in which dramatic irony is used for a satirical purpose.

The situational irony in the work is never subtle, as it frequently is in genres other than satire. The discrepancy between what can reasonably be expected to happen and what actually happens is broad and bold, even beyond the bounds of logic, explanation, and reality.

Task: Describe the context and content of two passages in which dramatic irony is used for a satirical purpose.

Voltaire is unconcerned with maintaining the scale and appearance of reality. The lack of verisimilitude purposely takes the narrative into the realm of the unreal and fantastic. Furthermore, the frequent use of hyperbole exaggerates situations beyond the limits of reality.

Tasks: Define verisimilitude and hyperbole. Provide an example of missing verisimilitude and an example of hyperbole.

Parody

The individual adventures are unified as elements of a mock travelogue that collects the stories of many people. Although Candide himself undergoes all sorts of trials, the story is also concerned with the evils suffered by many people all over the world. The effect created by the travelogue, therefore, is to universalize evil, even as the tone of the work creates emotional distance from the characters.

Reduced characterization prevents identification with Candide, or for that matter, with any of the characters. The characters become allegorical, or representative of human archetypes (and stereotypes), or of abstract concepts.

Tasks: Define reduced characterization. Name and describe the allegorical significance of four characters.

Philosophical and Moral Issues

THEODICYA literary or theological work that attempts to

reconcile the power and benevolence of God with the existence of evil.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz1646-1716

• German mathematician• Co-inventor of calculus• Philosopher and

theologian• Developer of the

philosophical theory of “optimism”

• Applied mathematical formulas to theological issues

By Karen and Michael Austin–Shepherd College

1) If God is all powerful2) And God is moral____________________Then everything that happens in the world must be the best thing that could possibly happen

By Karen and Michael Austin–Shepherd College

Alexander Pope

• Greatest English Neoclassical poet.

• Translator of The Iliad and The Odyssey

• Master of the closed heroic couplet

• English populizer of Leibnitz’s theory of optimism

By Karen and Michael Austin–Shepherd College

Our Limited Perspective

• We are part of a system and cannot see the whole picture

• What we see as bad is actually good and necessary

• We are a part of nature, not the singular end of creation

• It is only our pride that causes us to see our immediate suffering as a bad thing

• Whatever IS is right

By Karen and Michael Austin–Shepherd College

Voltaire

• Greatest writer in the French language

• Wrote in almost every genre of the day

• Wrote Candide as a satire on the views of Leibnitz and Pope

By Karen and Michael Austin–Shepherd College

Philosophical and Moral Issues—for discussion

Proposition: Candide does not reconcile the idea of the best of all possible worlds with the existence of evil. Agree/disagree; explain.

What universal failings of human institutions, foibles, and flaws are the targets of Voltaire’s satire? What does Voltaire’s ridicule ultimately contribute to the theme of the work?

Motif of the Garden – What do the last lines of the book mean? (“We must cultivate our garden.”)