“If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?”

Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the full horror and injustice of this “best of all possible worlds” - the Old and the New - before finally accepting that his old philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss has got it all wrong. There are no grounds for his daft theory of Optimism.

Yet life goes on. We must cultivate our garden, for there is certainly room for improvement. Candide is the most famous of Voltaire’s “philosophical tales”, in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense.

First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment.

In the audio guide below, Professor Roger Pearson of The Queen’s College, Oxford, who translated Candide and Other Stories for Oxford World’s Classics, introduces the book and its author. Follow the links below to listen to the audio clips.

Becoming Voltaire
Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the intellectual giants of the eighteenth century, was born François-Marie Arouet, the son of a prosperous Parisian lawyer. In his own day, his celebrity rested mainly on the tragedies and comedies he wrote for the theatre.
Roger Pearson describes how the young playwright became the free-thinking philosophe by the time he was middle aged [4:38]
Voltaire’s later years: his period of exile in Switzerland and his triumphant return to Paris at the end of his long life [3:07]

Voltaire waged a lifelong campaign against lazy thinking in all its manifestations. Blind adherence to religious dogma in particular incurred his wrath.
Voltaire's intellectual position [4:27]

Candide and the weapon of humour
All the stories in this volume belong to the genre of “philosophical tales”. In this clip, Roger Pearson explains what the philosophical tale is and how Voltaire used it to puncture the dogmatism of his opponents.
The philosophical tale [2:40]

Voltaire once said: “I have only ever addressed one prayer to God and it is very short: ‘Please God, make all our enemies ridiculous.’ God has granted my wish.” As Roger Pearson says in the following clip,”the whole of Candide reads like a comic strip, a kind of eighteenth-century Asterix”.
Roger Pearson: Candide reads like a comic strip [5:35]

The other stories in this selection have been chosen because they are the funniest that Voltaire wrote.
The funniest stories that Voltaire wrote [5:11]

Why is translating Voltaire like the challenge of telling a good joke?
Translating Voltaire [1:43]

Reading Candide
Roger Pearson reads the opening of his translation of Candide [3:34]
Chapter 6: How they had a splendid auto-da-fé to prevent earthquakes, and how Candide was flogged [2:40]