Voltaire's Correspondence

Digital Readings

Nicholas Cronk author Glenn Roe author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:12th Nov '20

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Voltaire's Correspondence cover

This Element harnesses digital resources to unpack Voltaire's complex and prodigious correspondence for the modern reader.

This Element addresses how modern readers can understand the subtle and playful literary performances that constitute Voltaire's correspondence. Digital reading methods and resources enhance our understanding of this complex literary object and its relationship to Voltaire's more canonical literary output, and to the Enlightenment world at large.Voltaire's correspondence has been described as his 'greatest masterpiece' – but if it is, it is also his least studied. One of the most prodigious correspondences in Western literature, it poses significant interpretative challenges to the critic and reader alike. Considered individually, the letters present a series of complex, subtle, and playful literary performances; taken together, they constitute a formidable, and even forbidding, ensemble. How can modern readers even attempt to understand such an imposing work? This Element addresses this question through the use of digital reading methods and resources that enhance our understanding of this complex literary object and its relationship to Voltaire's more canonical literary output, and indeed to the Enlightenment world at large. Nicholas Cronk and Glenn Roe provide scholars and students with new pathways into this particular corpus, using tools and approaches that can then be applied to correspondences and life-writing texts in all languages and periods.

ISBN: 9781108791724

Dimensions: 227mm x 150mm x 6mm

Weight: 150g

75 pages