We use cookies to enhance your experience on our website. By continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Find out more

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $8.95

Format:
Paperback
352 pp.
129 mm x 196 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199535613

Publication date:
May 2008

Imprint: OUP UK


Candide and Other Stories

New Edition

Voltaire
Roger Pearson

Series : Oxford World's Classics

'If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?'

Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the full horror and injustice of this 'best of all possible worlds' - the Old and the New - before finally accepting that his old philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss has got it all wrong. There are no grounds for his daft theory of Optimism. Yet life goes on. We must cultivate our garden, for there is certainly room for improvement.

Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's 'philosophical tales', in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull - do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. This new edition also includes a verse tale based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, in which we discover that most elusive of secrets: What Pleases the Ladies.

Readership : Readers and students of French literature, the Enlightenment, eighteenth-century philosophy and culture, Voltaire

Candide
Micromegas
Zadig
The Ingenu
The White Bull
What Pleases the Ladies

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

In addition to Voltaire, Roger Pearson has translated Zola, La Bête humaine, and Maupassant, A Life for OWC, and Zola's Germinal for Penguin.

There are no related titles available at this time.

Special Features

  • This well-established selection of Voltaire's philosophical stories is now updated and expanded to include the verse tale What Pleases the Ladies
  • The most extensive one-volume selection currently available.
  • Revised introduction reflects recent critical debates and includes a new section on Voltaire's verse tales, increasingly seen as belonging with his prose tales.
  • Revised notes and updated bibliography.