Candide

Candide is Voltaire’s 1759 satirical novella about a sheltered young man whose travels expose him to violence, disaster, and injustice. It mocks philosophical optimism and ends by urging practical work over abstract speculation.

Philosophical optimism: The view that reality is ultimately ordered for the best, despite apparent suffering and evil. Pangloss’s doctrine supplies the target that Candide’s disasters repeatedly undermine.
Voltaire: The pen name of François-Marie Arouet, an influential French writer and Enlightenment thinker. He wrote Candide amid a career of attacks on dogmatism and intolerance.
Cunégonde: A young noblewoman in Candide and the object of Candide’s pursuit. Her changing circumstances expose the violence and exploitation hidden beneath romantic ideals.
Auto-da-fé in Candide: A public religious punishment staged in Candide after the Lisbon earthquake. The absurd ritual mocks attempts to prevent disaster by persecuting supposed heretics.
Censorship of Candide: The suppression and prosecution of Voltaire’s novella by authorities after its publication. Its attacks on religion and political power made the book a target soon after 1759.
Pangloss: The fictional philosopher in Candide who teaches that everything happens for the best. His unwavering optimism makes the novella’s central argument comic and concrete.
Lisbon earthquake of 1755: A major earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755, followed by fires and a tsunami. The disaster sharpened European debate over whether suffering fits a benevolent cosmic order.
Martin (Candide): A scholar and traveling companion in Candide who holds a deeply pessimistic view of human nature. His pessimism counters Pangloss’s optimism without offering an easy escape from suffering.
Bulgarian army in Candide: The fictional army that recruits Candide and exposes him to military discipline and battle. Its brutal absurdity strips war of heroic justification.
Enlightenment: An intellectual movement emphasizing reason, criticism, and inquiry that flourished in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Candide uses Enlightenment-era debate while exposing the limits of abstract rational systems.

Linked from 7 pages