Voltaire's Role in History

Voltaire continued to write and re-assumed his go under among the French aristocracy after his incarceration. A heated scrap with a member of aristocracy resulted in his subsequent acquit from France.

Some historians contend that it was Voltaire's English sojourn during his French acquit that greatly decided his political and religious thinking. Voltaire lived in England between 1726 and 1729. He was attracted by the ideas of philosopher John Locke, scientist Sir Isaac Newton, and fellow writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. scorn foreign influence, Voltaire maintained vestiges of French intellectual thought. In describing this subtraction of ideas, Redman (1977) writes, " . . . Voltaire drank deep from two springs: from English freethinkers and scientific investigators, and from French sources that were too congenial to his intellect and temperament" (p. 14).

Voltaire returned to France from transport in 1729. dead thereafter, he published one of his most important historical works, History of Charles XII (1731). [The other prominent full-dress histories that Voltaire produced during his life sentence were Siecle de Louis XIV (1751) and Essai sur les Moeurs et l'sprit des Nations (1756).] The unmitigated English influence of some(prenominal) of Voltaire's literary works written after his exile was considered an affront to French customs and institutions. Under pressure from French authorities, Voltaire fled Paris for the French countryside.

Although some historians claim that Voltaire's abundant literary output was motivated by greed, others contend that Voltaire's works were characterized by a desire to prepare the wrongs he saw in the world. Voltaire conceived of history as an instructor, for both(prenominal) the monarchy and the masses: "In Voltaire's opinion, there was no mentor to be compared with the unbiased written record; for, in history, men, however exalted, discover their deserts: the evil they do lives after them, the good is not interred with their bones" (Black, 1965, p. 32). For instance, in writing Charles XII, Voltaire sought to set up to monarchs the futility of conquest.

aire's sojourn with his mistress the Marquise du Chatelet in her chateau at Cirey in Lorraine marks another distinctive period of development in his intellectual thought. Known as Voltaire's "Cirey period," this timespan (between 1734 to 1749) was remarkably prolific. Voltaire produced five tragedies, four-spot comedies, two operas, two major poems, an essay on metaphysics, two works on Sir Isaac Newton, and numerous edits and revisions of work: "What is sufficiently agnize is that existence at Cirey in the depths of the country was for the most part, disdain its elegance, austere and rigorous" (Mason, 1981, p. 29). The Marquise assisted Voltaire in his immense literary efforts at Cirey, until her death in 1749. During his Cirey period, Voltaire's development in thought paralleled that of the French intellectual atmosphere, influenced by equally watertight traditional and English currents (Redman, 1977, p. 15).

Black, J.B. (1965). The art of history. New York: Russell & Russell.

One of Voltaire's superlative contributions to the study of history was his inclusion of a non-European perspective. Prior to Voltaire, historians had draw ancient history based on a actual interpretation of the Bible. Voltaire expanded this worldview by injecting the philosophies of the time of Reason and the Age of Enlightenmen
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