| Candide: Or Optimism Contributor(s): Voltaire (Author), Raffel, Burton (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0300119879 ISBN-13: 9780300119879 Publisher: Yale University Press OUR PRICE: $16.34 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2006 Annotation: In this new translation of Voltaire's "Candide, "distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novel's irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that--had Voltaire been a twenty-first-century American--he might himself have employed. The translation is immediate and unencumbered, and for the first time makes Voltaire the "satirist a "wicked pleasure for English-speaking readers. "Candide recounts "the fantastically improbable travels, adventures, and misfortunes of the young Candide, his beloved Cunegonde, and his devoutly optimistic tutor, Pangloss. Endowed at the start with good fortune and every prospect for happiness and success, the characters nevertheless encounter every conceivable misfortune. Voltaire's philosophical tale, in part an ironic attack on the optimistic thinking of such figures as G. W. Leibniz and Alexander Pope, has proved enormously influential over the years. In a general introduction to this volume, historian Johnson Kent Wright places "Candide in "the contexts of Voltaire's life and work and the Age of Enlightenment. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.54" H x 5.48" W x 8.24" (0.50 lbs) 176 pages |
| Accelerated Reader Info |
| Quiz #: 28450 Reading Level: 7.3 Interest Level: Upper Grades Point Value: 5.0 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The translation of choice for twenty-first-century readers of Voltaire's satiric masterpiece. In this new translation of Voltaire's Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novel's irreverent spirit and offers a vivid, contemporary version of the 250-year-old text. Raffel casts the novel in an English idiom that--had Voltaire been a twenty-first-century American--he might himself have employed. The translation is immediate and unencumbered, and for the first time makes Voltaire the satirist a wicked pleasure for English-speaking readers. Candide recounts the fantastically improbable travels, adventures, and misfortunes of the young Candide, his beloved Cun gonde, and his devoutly optimistic tutor, Pangloss. Endowed at the start with good fortune and every prospect for happiness and success, the characters nevertheless encounter every conceivable misfortune. Voltaire's philosophical tale, in part an ironic attack on the optimistic thinking of such figures as G. W. Leibniz and Alexander Pope, has proved enormously influential over the years. In a general introduction to this volume, historian Johnson Kent Wright places Candide in the contexts of Voltaire's life and work and the Age of Enlightenment. |