Editing Voltaire (section)

== Writings ==
=== History ===
Voltaire had an enormous influence on the development of [[historiography]] through his demonstration of fresh new ways to look at the past. Guillaume de Syon argues:
{{blockquote|Voltaire recast historiography in both factual and analytical terms. Not only did he reject traditional biographies and accounts that claim the work of supernatural forces, but he went so far as to suggest that earlier historiography was rife with falsified evidence and required new investigations at the source. Such an outlook was not unique in that the scientific spirit that 18th-century intellectuals perceived themselves as invested with. A rationalistic approach was key to rewriting history.<ref>Guillaume de Syon, "Voltaire" in {{Cite book |editor-last=Boyd |editor-first=Kelly |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0121vD9STIMC&pg=PA1270 |title=Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, vol 2 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=1999 |isbn=978-1-884964-33-6 |pages=1270–72}}</ref>}}

Voltaire's best-known histories are ''[[History of Charles XII]]'' (1731), ''[[The Age of Louis XIV]]'' (1751), and his ''[[Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations|Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations]]'' (1756). He broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history and achievements in the arts and sciences. The ''Essay on Customs'' traced the progress of world civilization in a universal context, rejecting both nationalism and the traditional Christian frame of reference. Influenced by [[Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet|Bossuet]]'s ''Discourse on Universal History'' (1682), he was the first scholar to attempt seriously a history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks, and emphasizing economics, culture and political history. He treated Europe as a whole rather than a collection of nations. He was the first to emphasize the debt of medieval culture to Middle Eastern civilization, but otherwise was weak on the Middle Ages. Although he repeatedly warned against political bias on the part of the historian, he did not miss many opportunities to expose the intolerance and frauds of the church over the ages. Voltaire advised scholars that anything contradicting the normal course of nature was not to be believed. Although he found evil in the historical record, he fervently believed reason and expanding literacy would lead to progress.

[[File:Un dîner de philosophes.Jean Huber.jpg|thumb|Voltaire with [[Denis Diderot]], [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert]], [[Marquis de Condorcet]] and [[Jean-François de La Harpe]]]]
Voltaire explains his view of historiography in his article on "History" in Diderot's ''[[Encyclopédie]]'': "One demands of modern historians more details, better ascertained facts, precise dates, more attention to customs, laws, mores, commerce, finance, agriculture, population." Voltaire's histories imposed the values of the Enlightenment on the past, but at the same time he helped free historiography from antiquarianism, Eurocentrism, religious intolerance and a concentration on great men, diplomacy, and warfare.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sakmann, Paul |year=1971 |title=The Problems of Historical Method and of Philosophy of History in Voltaire |journal=History and Theory |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=24–59 |doi=10.2307/2504245 |jstor=2504245| issn = 0018-2656}}</ref><ref>Gay, Peter (1988) ''Voltaire's Politics''</ref> Yale professor [[Peter Gay]] says Voltaire wrote "very good history", citing his "scrupulous concern for truths", "careful sifting of evidence", "intelligent selection of what is important", "keen sense of drama", and "grasp of the fact that a whole civilization is a unit of study".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gay, Peter |year=1957 |title=Carl Becker's Heavenly City |journal=Political Science Quarterly |volume=72 |issue=2 |pages=182–99 |doi=10.2307/2145772 |jstor=2145772}}</ref>

=== Poetry ===
From an early age, Voltaire displayed a talent for writing verse, and his first published work was poetry. He wrote two book-long epic poems, including the first ever written in French, the ''[[Henriade]]'', and later, ''[[The Maid of Orleans (poem)|The Maid of Orleans]]'', besides many other smaller pieces.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}}

The ''Henriade'' was written in imitation of [[Virgil]], using the [[French alexandrine|alexandrine]] couplet reformed and rendered monotonous for modern readers but it was a huge success in the 18th and early 19th century, with sixty-five editions and translations into several languages. The epic poem transformed French King Henry IV into a national hero for his attempts at instituting tolerance with his Edict of Nantes. [[The Maid of Orleans (poem)|''La Pucelle'']], on the other hand, is a [[burlesque]] on the legend of [[Joan of Arc]].

=== Prose ===
[[File:Candide1759.jpg|thumb|upright=1|Title page of Voltaire's ''[[Candide]]'', 1759]]

Many of Voltaire's [[prose]] works and romances, usually composed as pamphlets, were written as [[polemics]]. ''[[Candide]]'' attacks the passivity inspired by Leibniz's philosophy of [[optimism]] through the character Pangloss's frequent refrain that, because God created it, this is of necessity the "[[best of all possible worlds]]". ''L'Homme aux quarante ecus'' (''The Man of Forty Pieces of Silver'') addresses social and political ways of the time; ''[[Zadig]]'' and others, the received forms of moral and metaphysical orthodoxy; and some were written to deride the Bible. In these works, Voltaire's ironic style, free of exaggeration, is apparent, particularly the restraint and simplicity of the verbal treatment.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=204i}} ''Candide'' in particular is the best example of his style. Voltaire also has—in common with [[Jonathan Swift]]—the distinction of paving the way for science fiction's philosophical irony, particularly in his ''[[Micromégas]]'' and the vignette "[[Plato's Dream]]" (1756).

[[File:Voltaire-Baquoy.gif|thumb|Voltaire at [[Frederick the Great]]'s ''[[Sanssouci]]'', by [[Pierre Charles Baquoy]]]]

In general, his criticism and miscellaneous writing show a similar style to Voltaire's other works. Almost all of his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his caustic yet conversational tone. In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism. In pure literary criticism his principal work is the ''[[Commentaires sur Corneille|Commentaire sur Corneille]]'', although he wrote many more similar works—sometimes (as in his ''Life and Notices of Molière'') independently and sometimes as part of his ''Siècles''.{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=205}}

Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: "{{lang|fr|écrasez l'infâme}}", or "crush the infamous".<ref>McCabe, Joseph, ''A Treatise on Toleration and Other Essays'' (Amherst: Prometheus Books 1994) {{ISBN|0-87975-881-3}} p. viii.</ref> The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Palmer |first1=R.R. |title=A History of the Modern World |last2=Colton, Joel |publisher=McGraw-Hill, Inc. |year=1950 |isbn=0-07-040826-2}}</ref> He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of [[Jean Calas]] and [[François-Jean de la Barre]].{{sfn|Saintsbury|1911|p=204}} He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them" ({{lang|fr|La superstition met le monde entier en flammes; la philosophie les éteint}}).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Geoffrey Parrinder |url=https://archive.org/details/routledgediction00parr_498 |title=The Routledge Dictionary of Religious and Spiritual Quotations |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |page=[https://archive.org/details/routledgediction00parr_498/page/n39 24] |isbn=978-0415233934 |url-access=limited}}</ref>

The most oft-cited Voltaire quotation is apocryphal. He is incorrectly credited with writing, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." These were not his words, but rather those of [[Evelyn Beatrice Hall]], written under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre in her 1906 biographical book ''[[The Friends of Voltaire]]''. Hall intended to summarize in her own words Voltaire's attitude towards [[Claude Adrien Helvétius]] and his controversial book ''De l'esprit'', but her first-person expression was mistaken for an actual quotation from Voltaire. Her interpretation does capture the spirit of Voltaire's attitude towards Helvétius; it had been said Hall's summary was inspired by a quotation found in a 1770 Voltaire letter to an Abbot le Riche, in which he was reported to have said, "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write."<ref>{{Cite book | last1=Boller | first1=Paul F. Jr. |url=https://archive.org/details/theyneversaiditb00boll |title=They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions |last2=George, John |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1989 |isbn=0-19-505541-1 |location=New York}}</ref> Nevertheless, scholars believe there must have again been misinterpretation, as the letter does not seem to contain any such quote.{{efn|Charles Wirz, archivist at the Voltaire Institute and Museum in Geneva, recalled in 1994, that Hall 'wrongly' placed this quotation between speech marks in two of her works about Voltaire, recognising expressly the quotation in question was not one, in a letter of 9 May 1939, which was published in 1943 in volume LVIII under the title "Voltaire never said it" (pp. 534–35) of the review ''Modern language notes'', Johns Hopkins Press, 1943, Baltimore. An extract from the letter: 'The phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" which you have found in my book ''Voltaire in His Letters'' is my own expression and should not have been put in inverted commas. Please accept my apologies for having, quite unintentionally, misled you into thinking I was quoting a sentence used by Voltaire (or anyone else but myself).' The words "my own" were underlined personally by Hall in her letter. To believe certain commentators – Norbert Guterman, ''A Book of French Quotations'', 1963 – Hall was referencing back to a Voltaire letter of 6 February 1770 to an abbot le Riche where Voltaire supposedly said, "Reverend, I hate what you write, but I will give my life so that you can continue to write." The problem is that, if you consult the letter itself, the sentence there does not appear, nor even the idea: "A M Le Riche a Amiens. 6 February. You left, Sir, des Welches for des Welches. You will find everywhere barbarians obstinate. The number of wise will always be small. It is true ... it has increased; but it is nothing in comparison with the stupid ones; and, by misfortune, one says that God is always for the big battalions. It is necessary that the decent people stick together and stay under cover. There are no means that their small troop could tackle the party of the fanatics in open country. I was very sick, I was near death every winter; this is the reason, Sir, why I have answered you so late. I am not less touched by it than your memory. Continue to me your friendship; it comforts me my evils and stupidities of the human genre. Receive my assurances, etc." Voltaire, however, did not hesitate to wish censure against slander and personal libels. Here is what he writes in his "Atheism" article in the ''Dictionnaire philosophique'': "Aristophanes (this man that the commentators admire because he was Greek, not thinking that Socrates was Greek also), Aristophanes was the first who accustomed the Athenians to consider Socrates an atheist. ... The tanners, the shoemakers and the dressmakers of Athens applauded a joke in which one represented Socrates raised in the air in a basket, announcing there was God, and praising himself to have stolen a coat by teaching philosophy. A whole people, whose bad government authorized such infamous licences, deserved well what it got, to become the slave of the Romans, and today of the Turks."}}

Voltaire's first major philosophical work in his battle against "{{lang|fr|l'infâme}}" was the ''Traité sur la tolérance'' (''[[Treatise on Tolerance]]''), exposing the Calas affair, along with the tolerance exercised by other faiths and in other eras (for example, by the Jews, the Romans, the Greeks and the Chinese). Then, in his ''[[Dictionnaire philosophique]]'', containing such articles as "Abraham", "Genesis", "Church Council", he wrote about what he perceived as the human origins of dogmas and beliefs, as well as inhuman behavior of religious and political institutions in shedding blood over the quarrels of competing sects. Amongst other targets, Voltaire criticized France's colonial policy in North America, dismissing the vast territory of [[New France]] as "[[a few acres of snow]]" ("{{lang|fr|quelques arpents de neige}}").

=== Letters ===
Voltaire also engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence during his life, totalling over 20,000 letters. [[Theodore Besterman]]'s collected edition of these letters, completed only in 1964, fills 102 volumes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brumfitt |first=J. H. |year=1965 |title=The Present State of Voltaire Studies |journal=Forum for Modern Language Studies |publisher=Court of the University of St Andrews |volume=I |issue=3 |page=230 |doi=10.1093/fmls/I.3.230}}</ref> One historian called the letters "a feast not only of wit and eloquence but of warm friendship, humane feeling, and incisive thought."{{sfn|Durant|Durant|1967|p=138}}

In Voltaire's correspondence with [[Catherine the Great]] he derided democracy. He wrote, "Almost nothing great has ever been done in the world except by the genius and firmness of a single man combating the prejudices of the multitude."<ref>Massie, Robert K. (2011). Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York: Random House. p. 335</ref>