Monday, November 30, 2015
Candide's Travels...A Modest Candide ?
As I was reading Candide last night, I got the vibe that I was reading Gulliver's Travels or A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. Interestingly enough, Mrs. Quinet touched on this idea in class today when we were discussing Simplicius Simplicissimus. It makes sense that I would have thought of these two pieces of literature because they are works of satire like Candide. Satire, as we defined today, is "a type of writing that ridicules/critiques a human weakness, vice, or folly in order to bring about social reform." Satire, whether light-hearted or serious/scathing, was huge during the Enlightenment. The whole point of these authors writing about pressing issues was to bring the public's attention to them. I find their use of wit and humor to do this absolutely genius.
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4 comments:
I completely agree, Abbey. The similarity between this pieces is very prevalent. Satirical pieces are extremely entertaining to me because I just find it interesting that the author is able to make such extreme occurrences seem so normal and casual. This makes for an amusing read in my opinion. However, I fail to find the humor in the satirical piece. Although I still find it extremely interesting in the sense of its satirical writing style, I don't find any humor in the awful events that happen to these characters in "Candide". In the introduction they said that people laugh out of discomfort but I just feel pity.
Yes, after reading page 90-97 in Norton I realized that Gulliver's Travels and Candide were around the same time. It was interesting to note in the reading that the people of the time focused on the attitudes of public rather than the individual. The last few pages talked about how stories during that time were very similar because they shared similar plot and character ploys. I found it very interesting how the character of Candide mirrored some traits of Gulliver and other people like those in the Canterbury tales. Candid's intentional ignorance and happy attitude while he goes through peril is enjoyable to the reader.
Many raps are also satirical, js. <3
I agree that this novella was very cleverly constructed. I think it is very entertaining to try and uncover the underlying insults that Voltaire includes. I normally find things with humor such as this quite amusing, as I enjoy most when humor is mixed with wit and more downplayed. But I do agree with Belin in that I found this specific story more depressing than humorous. As I was reading I could recognize what was meant to be satire, but normally I did not find it funny. I think when you take certain events that are this tragic, and try to make light out of them, it is almost in a way disrespectful.
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