Voltaire's Correspondence
Digital Readings

This Element harnesses digital resources to unpack Voltaire's complex and prodigious correspondence for the modern reader.

Nicholas Cronk (Author), Glenn Roe (Author)

9781108791724, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

75 pages
22.7 x 15 x 0.6 cm, 0.15 kg

Voltaire's correspondence has been described as his 'greatest masterpiece' – but if it is, it is also his least studied. One of the most prodigious correspondences in Western literature, it poses significant interpretative challenges to the critic and reader alike. Considered individually, the letters present a series of complex, subtle, and playful literary performances; taken together, they constitute a formidable, and even forbidding, ensemble. How can modern readers even attempt to understand such an imposing work? This Element addresses this question through the use of digital reading methods and resources that enhance our understanding of this complex literary object and its relationship to Voltaire's more canonical literary output, and indeed to the Enlightenment world at large. Nicholas Cronk and Glenn Roe provide scholars and students with new pathways into this particular corpus, using tools and approaches that can then be applied to correspondences and life-writing texts in all languages and periods.

1. Beginnings
2. Names
3. Neologisms
4. Quotations | French
5. Quotations | Latin
6. Futures.

Subject Areas: Graphical & digital media applications [UG], History of Western philosophy [HPC], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]