![]() Both the Régent and King George I of Great Britain presented Voltaire with medals as a mark of their appreciation. Its immediate critical and financial success established his reputation. The Comédie-Française had agreed in January 1717 to stage his debut play, Œdipe, and it opened in mid-November 1718, seven months after his release. One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused the Régent of incest with his daughter, resulted in an eleven-month imprisonment in the Bastille. As a result, he was twice sentenced to prison and once to temporary exile to England. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for critiques of the government. Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris. Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille from to 15 April 1718 in a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick walls. Their affair, considered scandalous, was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire was forced to return to France by the end of the year. At The Hague, Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer (known as 'Pimpette'). In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, the brother of Voltaire's godfather. Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. But the young man continued to write, producing essays and historical studies. ![]() When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law, this time in Caen, Normandy. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. īy the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer. ![]() He was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711), where he was taught Latin, theology, and rhetoric later in life he became fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English. Nicknamed "Zozo" by his family, Voltaire was baptized on 22 November 1694, with François de Castagnère, abbé de Châteauneuf, and Marie Daumard, the wife of his mother's cousin, standing as godparents. Two of his older brothers-Armand-François and Robert-died in infancy, and his surviving brother Armand and sister Marguerite-Catherine were nine and seven years older, respectively. Some speculation surrounds Voltaire's date of birth, because he claimed he was born on 20 February 1694 as the illegitimate son of a nobleman, Guérin de Rochebrune or Roquebrune. ![]() 1660–1701), whose family was on the lowest rank of the French nobility. įrançois-Marie Arouet was born in Paris, the youngest of the five children of François Arouet (1649–1722), a lawyer who was a minor treasury official, and his wife, Marie Marguerite Daumard ( c. His best-known work and magnum opus, Candide, is a novella which comments on, criticizes and ridicules many events, thinkers and philosophies of his time, most notably Gottfried Leibniz and his belief that our world is the "best of all possible worlds". His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance and religious dogma, as well as the French institutions of his day. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, but also scientific expositions. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state. de Voltaire ( / v ɒ l ˈ t ɛər, v oʊ l-/ also US: / v ɔː l-/ French: ), was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher ( philosophe), satirist, and historian. Philosophy of history, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, separation of church and stateįrançois-Marie Arouet ( French: 21 November 1694 – ), known by his nom de plume M.
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