CANDIDE & Related Resources and Links

[ConnieAnnKirk]

Sometimes readers like to look up information about classic novels in books or on the Internet or elsewhere.  If you run across particularly helpful websites or books related to CANDIDE, please feel free to post them here to share with other club members.

~ConnieK

[Peppermill]

Here's the link to the Gutenberg version of Candide:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19942/19942-h/19942-h.htm

[Peppermill]

French text with English notes
http://www.linguatextltd.com/europeanmasterpieces/moliere/pdf/CANDIDEpreview.pdf

Note from introduction: "...it is an indispensable primer on the principle [sic] ideals of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Voltaire, the greatest leap in man's understanding of himself and of the world. This immensely popular and very readable short novel contributed to the modern era's shift of consciousness from a God-centered view of reality to a man-centered one." -- David A. Ross, California State University, Fresno, 2007

[Peppermill]

Some more Candide related resources:

Sparknotes on Candide
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/candide/

Cliff Notes on Candide
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Candide.id-50.html

Another on-line version
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/voltaire/candide.html

Still another on-line version, with some comments by readers and a brief introduction. Also, a link to a biography.
http://www.online-literature.com/voltaire/candide/

City University of NY study guide for Candide
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/candide.html

Study questions for Candide
http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/voltaire/candide.htm

[Peppermill]

The main link for The Voltaire Society of America has moved to
Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, (from the University of Chicago) and is maintained by Jack Iverson:

http://www.whitman.edu/VSA/

There is much to explore on these pages! The clip below came from:

http://www.whitman.edu/VSA/Candide/tout.est.bien.html

"That will do for Plato. Leibniz, who was certainly a better geometer than he, and a more profound metaphysician, did mankind the service of explaining that we ought to be entirely satisfied, and that god could do no more for us, that he had necessarily chosen, among all the possibilities, what was undeniably the best one.

"'What will become of original sin?' they shouted at him. 'It will become what it can,' said Leibniz and his friends; but in public he wrote that original sin was necessarily part of the best of worlds.

"What! to be chased from a place of delights, where we would have lived for ever if an apple had not been eaten! What! produce in wretchedness wretched children who will suffer everything, who will make others suffer everything! What! to undergo every illness, feel every sorrow, die in pain, and for refreshment be burned in the eternity of centuries! Is this really the best lot that was available? This is not too good for us; and how can it be good for good?

"Leibniz realized that these questions were unanswerable: so he wrote thick books in which he did not agree with himself."