The purpose of this research is to examine Voltaire's Candide in relation to religious intolerance. The plan of the research will be to describe the background in which the novel was written and then to discuss the pattern of events and ideas in the narrative of the novel and the means by which those ideas are expressed in the work. The main focus will be on demonstrating evidence of Voltaire's own intolerance for religious, based on his ridiculing of God.
It was in 1758 that Voltaire wrote Candide, a satire, that became his best-known work. At the time Voltaire wrote Candide, he was living near Geneva, in Ferney (Voltaire 378). As a matter of fact, Voltaire had been in political exile or in political controversy several times during his professional life. He was imprisoned in the Bastille for quarrels with the French nobility in the 1720s, but he became a court favorite in France in the 1730s and 1740s. He took a job in the German court of Frederick II, but he fell out of royal favor in Germany and traveled in England and Europe until 1758, when he moved to Ferney for good. It was then that Candide was written. It was published anonymously, and Voltaire denied authorship for many years even though authorship was attributed to him (Holmes 50).
Candide is a novel about a young man named Candide brought up in a fine castle in Westphalia, Germany. The novel tells how Candide is driven out of the castle because of his love for Cunegonde, the daughter of the Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh. What happens is that Cunegonde passes by the Baron's philosopher, Master Pangloss, at the moment Pangloss is making love to a chambermaid. Cunegonde is curious about this and tempts Candide to make love to her. The Baron catches them and "thrust[s] Candide out of the castle, with lusty kicks" (Voltaire 120). Banished from Thunder-ten-tronckh and all on his own, Candide knows nothing of the wider world. That is because Pangloss, described as a teacher ...