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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the 1750s. But for the general reader, the novel's driving principle is clear enough: the idea (endemic in Voltaire's day) that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and apparent folly, misery and strife are actually harbingers of a greater good we cannot perceive, is hogwash.
Telling the tale of the good-natured but star-crossed Candide (think Mr. Magoo armed with deadly force), as he travels the world struggling to be reunited with his love, Lady Cunegonde, the novel smashes such ill-conceived optimism to splinters. Candide's tutor, Dr. Pangloss, is steadfast in his philosophical good cheer, in the face of more and more fantastic misfortune; Candide's other companions always supply good sense in the nick of time. Still, as he demolishes optimism, Voltaire pays tribute to human resilience, and in doing so gives the book a pleasant indomitability common to farce. Says one character, a princess turned one-buttocked hag by unkind Fate: "I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"--Michael Gerber [via]
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Candide, Voltaire's biting portrayal of eighteenth-century European society, is a central text of the Enlightenment and essential reading for history students today. Preserving the text's provocative nature, Daniel Gordon's new translation enhances Candide's read-ability and highlights the text's wit and satire for twentieth-century readers. The introduction places the work and its author in historical context, showing students how the complexities of Voltaire's life relate to the events, philosophy, and characters of Candide. A related documents section - with personal correspondence to and from Voltaire - gives students another lens through which to view this influential thinker. Helpful editorial features include explanatory notes throughout the text and a chronology of Voltaire's life. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
Political satire doesn't age well, but occasionally a diatribe contains enough art and universal mirth to survive long after its timeliness has passed. Candide is such a book. Penned by that Renaissance man of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, Candide is steeped in the political and philosophical controversies of the 1750s. But for the general reader, the novel's driving principle is clear enough: the idea (endemic in Voltaire's day) that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and apparent folly, misery and strife are actually harbingers of a greater good we cannot perceive, is hogwash.
Telling the tale of the good-natured but star-crossed Candide (think Mr. Magoo armed with deadly force), as he travels the world struggling to be reunited with his love, Lady Cunegonde, the novel smashes such ill-conceived optimism to splinters. Candide's tutor, Dr. Pangloss, is steadfast in his philosophical good cheer, in the face of more and more fantastic misfortune; Candide's other companions always supply good sense in the nick of time. Still, as he demolishes optimism, Voltaire pays tribute to human resilience, and in doing so gives the book a pleasant indomitability common to farce. Says one character, a princess turned one-buttocked hag by unkind Fate: "I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"--Michael Gerber [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
In this new translation of Voltaires Candide, distinguished translator Burton Raffel captures the French novels 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 Cunégonde, 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. Voltaires 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 Voltaires life and work and the Age of Enlightenment.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
One of the finest satires ever written, Voltaires Candide savagely skewers this very optimistic approach to life as a shamefully inadequate response to human suffering. The swift and lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide experiences and witnesses calamity upon calamity, he begins to discover thatcontrary to the teachings of his tutor, Dr. Panglossall is perhaps not always for the best. After many trials, travails, and incredible reversals of fortune, Candide and his friends finally retire together to a small farm, where they discover that the secret of happiness is simply to cultivate one's garden, a philosophy that rejects excessive optimism and metaphysical speculation in favor of the most basic pragmatism.
Filled with wit, intelligence, and an abundance of dark humor, Candide is relentless and unsparing in its attacks upon corruption and hypocrisyin religion, government, philosophy, science, and even romance. Ultimately, this celebrated work says that it is possible to challenge blind optimism without losing the will to live and pursue a happy life.
Gita May is Professor of French at Columbia University. She has published extensively on the French Enlightenment, eighteenth-century aesthetics, the novel and autobiography, and women in literature, history, and the arts.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide and Other Tales'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide and Related Texts'
This lively new translation of Voltaire's satiric masterpiece is accompanied by a short selection of writings of each of the most prominent optimists to whom Voltaire was responding -- Leibniz, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Pope, Wolff, Rousseau, and Malebranche -- and thus offers a better perspective of the intellectual context in which Candide was written, and of its place in Enlightenment though, than does any other edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism'
Robert M. Adams's superlative revised translation of Candide provides the basis for this widely adopted Norton Critical Edition.
The accompanying apparatus has been revised in accordance with recent biographical and critical materials. The Backgrounds and Criticism sections provide important essays that shed light on major critical issues relevant to Candide and to the intellectual climate of the period. In addition to the reports of five English visitors to Ferney, essays by Haydn Mason, Erich Auerbach, Ernst Cassirer, and Robert M. Adams are included. The final section of the edition, "The Climate of Controversy," summarizes the debate surrounding Voltaire's works and includes essays by Peter Gay, Raymond Naves, Gustave Lanson, and John Morley. Also included are a series of quotations about Voltaire by such prominent figures as Gustave Flaubert, Frederick the Great, and Stendhal, as well as the text of "Pangloss's Song," a ballad from the 1956 Candide-based operetta by Richard Wilbur. [via]More editions of Candide or Optimism: A Fresh Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide : Or, Optimism'
In this splendid new translation of Voltaires satiric masterpiece, all the celebrated wit, irony, and trenchant social commentary of one of the great works of the Enlightenment is restored and refreshed.
Voltaire may have cast a jaundiced eye on eighteenth-century Europea place that was definitely not the best of all possible worlds. But amid its decadent society, despotic rulers, civil and religious wars, and other ills, Voltaire found a mother lode of comic material. And this is why Peter Constantines thoughtful translation is such a pleasure, presenting all the books subtlety and ribald joys precisely as Voltaire had intended.
The globe-trotting misadventures of the youthful Candide; his tutor, Dr. Pangloss; Martin, and the exceptionally trouble-prone object of Candides affections, Cunégonde, as they brave exile, destitution, cannibals, and numerous deprivation, provoke both belly laughs and deep contemplation about the roles of hope and suffering in human life.
The transformation of Candides outlook from panglossian optimism to realism neatly lays out Voltaires philosophythat even in Utopia, life is less about happiness than survivalbut not before providing us with one of literatures great and rare pleasures. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide Ou L'Optimisme'
This edition is essentially that of Richard Aldington edited with reference to the French editions by Andr Morize and George R. Havens. Norman L. Torrey's introduction is a brief commentary on Voltaire's central purpose of reducing the doctrine of philosophical optimism to absurdity. Also included are a list of principal dates in the life of Voltaire and a selected bibliography. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cliffsnotes Candide'
CliffsNotes on Candide explores the best known philosophic tale from Voltaire. The tale is a vehicle for his profoundest views on politics, religion, and philosophy. At the same time, it is an adventure tale about a young hero who travels far and wide and experiences great dangers.
With this study guide, youll see why Voltaire is considered among the greatest satirists in literature. Along with detailed explanations of the plot, your understanding will increase with insight into the life and times of the author. Other features that help you study include
Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'
Tom Jones isn't a bad guy, but boys just want to have fun. Nearly two and a half centuries after its publication, the adventures of the rambunctious and randy Tom Jones still makes for great reading. I'm not in the habit of using words like bawdy or rollicking, but if you look them up in the dictionary, you should see a picture of this book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life & Opinions of Tristam Shandy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy'
@ACockAndBallsStory Ive just been born, and I had a tragic accident. A windowpane fell on me, and flattened my dic NOSE. My nose! That was almost embarrassing.
Chapter XIX: I dont feel like tweeting today.
From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life And Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'
With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex Laurence Sterne s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne the most liberated spirit of all time . [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tom Jones'
Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, Rutherford College, University of Kent at Canterbury Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest. Tom Jones, the hero of the book, is introduced to the reader as the ward of a liberal Somerset squire. Tom is a generous but slightly wild and feckless country boy with a weakness for young women. Misfortune, followed by many spirited adventures as he travels to London to seek his fortune, teach him a sort of wisdom to go with his essential good-heartedness. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tom Jones - A Foundling'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tristram Shandy'
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)
Introduction by Peter Conrad [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Voltaire: Candide'
Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his various companions begin a breathless tour of Europe, South America and Asia, as an outrageous series of disasters befall them - earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, murder - sorely testing the young hero's optimism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Las Aventuras De Robinson Crusoe'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candido, O El Optimismo'
The novella begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism (or simply optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not outright rejecting optimism, advocating an enigmatic precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds".
Desde un punto de vista sardónico, la obra sigue las peripecias del protagonista Cándido en su primer encuentro con el precepto del optimismo leibniziano de que «todo sucede para bien en este, el mejor de los mundos posibles» y en una serie de aventuras subsecuentes que refutan de forma dramática el famoso precepto a pesar del obstinamiento con el que el personaje se aferra a éste.
La novela satiriza la filosofía de Leibniz, y es un muestrario de los horrores del mundo del siglo XVIII. En Cándido, Leibniz está representado por el filósofo Pangloss, tutor del protagonista. A pesar de observar y experimentar una serie de infortunios, Pangloss afirma repetidamente que «tout est au mieux» («todo sucede para bien») y que vive en «le meilleur des mondes possibles» («el mejor de los mundos posibles»).
Book Description: Wikipedia.org [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robinson Crusoe'
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vida Y Opiniones Del Caballero Tristram Shandy / The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy Gentleman'
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
Brought up in the household of a powerful Baron, Candide is an open-minded young man, whose tutor, Pangloss, has instilled in him the belief that 'all is for the best'. But when his love for the Baron's rosy-cheeked daughter is discovered, Candide is cast out to make his own way in the world. And so he and his various companions begin a breathless tour of Europe, South America and Asia, as an outrageous series of disasters befall them - earthquakes, syphilis, a brush with the Inquisition, murder - sorely testing the young hero's optimism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide'
218pages. 17,6x11x1,4cm. Poche. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Candide Ou l'Optimisme'
This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. [via]
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