The Confused Males of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, Voltaire’s Candide

The Confused Males of Montesquieus Persian Letters, Voltaires Candide, Swifts Gullivers Travels, Sternes Tristram Shandy, and Rousseaus First and Second Discourses at one time my father was then holding one of his second beds of justice, and was musing within himself about the hardships of matrimony, as my mother broke silence. My brother Toby, quoth she, is going to be unite to Mrs. Wadman. Then he will never, quoth my father, be able to lie diagonally in his bed again as long as he lives. (Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy) The eighteenth century, what a magnificent timea contemporary critic is likely to exclaim, and indeed it was. The century of Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Kant, Swift, Sterne, and others, whose names still make pound the sensitive he humanities of many students of history, philosophy, and literature. The Age of Enlightenment, when every aspect of mans lifemorals and vices natural and conventional laws issues of government and religion, of ma rriage and child rearing, of politics and economy, of the sciences and the artswas scrutinized under the critical eye of thinkers and often discarded without pity. A time of blossoming critical and literary thought, a time of great intellectual challenges, trials, and successesin a word, a splendid, magnificent, glorious time. And what books were written, what literary marvels were produced Montesquieus Persian Letters, Voltaires Candide, Swifts Gullivers Travels, Sternes Tristram Shandy, Rousseaus First and Second Discourses . . . advanced(a) and daring, they questioned a traditional, God-blessed and Church-sponsored view of mans life, providing armies of scholars with an enormous literary and philosophical heri... ...al pursuits with more earthly matters. To the modern reader, unfortunately, they may appear too enlightened. Notes 1If my reader wonders why I am taking so great an interest in this matter, I would like to point out that his or her (especially her) speculat ions are totally mistaken and irrelevant to the subject. 2Note that Uzbek is a Persian, and Candide is a German. Apparently when french writers create a hero with limited sexual prowess, they dont assign him a French origin, probably preserving the myth of French sexual vigor. Works Cited Montesquieu, de Baron de La Brde, Charles de Secondat. Persian Letters. New York Penguin, 1973. Sterne, Laurence. Tristram Shandy. New York Norton, 1980. Swift, Jonathan. Gullivers Travels. New York Da Capo Press, 1988. Voltaire Francois Marie Arouet. Candide. New York Bantam, 1959.