Voltaire & Candide

While I'm online this afternoon, I thought that I would post a quick entry on Candide and its author, the satirist and philosopher Voltaire.  The picture above is from a recent production of the opera Candide that was performed in Philadelphia.  Here is a review of that production:

http://phillyist.com/2008/10/17/phillyist_reviews_candide.php

Hmmm....I wonder if our library has a copy of this opera!

In case it does not, here is a link to the South Korean opera singer Sumi Jo's performance of "Glitter and Be Gay" from Bernstein's Candide. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4PWz6wBRzg

But back to the philosophical tale and its author!

To begin with, the BBC's h2g2 wiki has a useful overview of Candide.  It places Voltaire's most famous work into the context of his entire body of work as well as into its historical context:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A37616853

Here is a link to Brian Charles Clark's recent review of a new translation of Candide.  Here he compares Voltaire's work to the satires of Kurt Vonnegut, especially Slaughterhouse Five.

http://www.curledup.com/candidev.htm

On the other hand, Stephen A. Fuqua here compares Candide to Alexander Pope's "Essay on Man."  Pope is an eighteenth-century English poet; he was a few years older than Voltaire.  Pope, by the way, was a Catholic; for that reason, he could not go to the English universities or hold office or even live in London.

http://safnet.com/literae/html/cosmic.html

Here is blogger Sora Ryu's commentary on Candide alone.

http://daemon.gaia.com/blog/2009/2/so_you_still_believe_in_god_commentary_on_voltaires_candide?printable=1

I want to close with a few links about Voltaire himself:


Lucidcafe has posted a (relatively) short but comprehensive biography of Voltaire:

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/voltaire.html

And that biography links to an article about the beatings that Voltaire received from hired thugs over the years.

 http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/voltaire_rohan/

The Voltaire Foundation at Oxford has a more extensive biography of Voltaire.  It includes discussion of his works and his role in the Enlightenment.

http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/about_voltaire/biography.ssi

Below is a picture of Voltaire's chateau at Ferney, a French town near the Swiss border.

W.H. Auden wrote "Voltaire at Ferney," which I will link to below:

http://poetry.eserver.org/voltaire.html

This poem will give you some idea of what the writer's time there was like.

Lady Mary, Celebi, and the Ottoman Empire (part 2)

While I'm online, I thought I'd post a little bit of information about Lady Mary Wortley Montague and Evliya Celebi, our authors.  The picture above is Lady Mary in "Turkish costume."  I found it at the University of North Texas' exhibit on women writers.  This exhibit also included the following concise biography of Lady Mary:

http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/women/17th.htm#Lady%20Mary%20Wortley%20Montagu

This picture of a cover of a recent biography is probably a little more colorful!  Lady Mary, by the way, is particularly known for her early adoption of immunization.


Luminarium.org's biography is more extensive than the University of North Texas'.

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/montagu/marybio.htm

This site also has links to Lady Mary's works in various genres:

http://www.luminarium.org/eightlit/montagu/marybib.htm

Britain's Twickenham Museum also has information about Lady Mary in the context of her relationship with Alexander Pope:

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=180

For a little more information about Pope, here is the same museum's page on him:

http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=19

Below is a picture of the Ottoman author Evliya Celebi:

Here is a link to a biography of Celebi:

http://www.mymerhaba.com/Evliya-%C3%87elebi-Traveler-in-Turkey-138.html

Among the places that Celebi visited was Gjirokastra, Albania:

http://www.gjirokastra.org/sub_links/help_save/help_visit_evliya_celebi.html

Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism has posted Celebi's description of Van Castle in the city of Van:

http://www.kultur.gov.tr/EN/BelgeGoster.aspx?17A16AE30572D313E603BF9486D4371D58DCB41B038C3F0E



Here is more information about Celebi's travels and his writing:

http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/ssbf/evliyacelebi/eng/?rota/rota.html

http://www.kent.ac.uk/english/evliya/seyahatname.html

Lady Mary, Celebi, & the Ottoman Empire (part 1)

En 202 could also be called "The Age of Empire and After."  Heart of Darkness, of course, is very much about Empire, and our upcoming reading Things Fall Apart was written as the former colonies in Africa were becoming independent.  With Friday's reading (the letters of British satirist & literati Lady Mary Wortley Montague and the travel writing of Evliya Celebi), we have moved back in time to the 17th & 18th century and to other perspectives on Empire.

First of all, both of our readings are about the Ottoman Empire, the successor to the Byzantine Empire, which had been in turn the successor to the Roman Empire.  The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1301 to 1923 and was primarily an Islamic empire although at times it was a surprisingly diverse and tolerant empire. 

Secondly, whereas Lady Mary Wortley Montague was British, Evliya Celebi was Turkish.  In other words, he was not a traveler from an outside empire coming to describe the colonies and define the Other.  He was writing about his own country.  Moreover, in Lady Mary's day, Britain was on the rise, but it was not as powerful as it would be in Conrad's time.

Below is a map of the Ottoman Empire in 1683, the year before Celebi's death.

 

This map from Baylor University shows the Ottoman Empire from 1798 to 1923:

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire would be known as the "Sick Man of Europe."  However, if you take a course in Early Modern history or literature, you will see that this empire was quite powerful then.  During the 16th and 17th century, the Ottomans attempted to take Vienna, and not until 1683 and the Battle of Vienna did they give up.

Here is Valdosta State University's map of Europe that will show you just how far into Europe Vienna and Austria are!

For more detailed information about the Ottoman Empire, see this link to the BBC's site:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/ottomanempire_1.shtml

Korkut Ozgen has also put together an impressive site on this empire.  Here is a link to his pages on the empire's art and culture:

http://www.theottomans.org/english/art_culture/index.asp

Three or four years ago the Sackler Gallery had a wonderful exhibit on clothing and textiles from the Ottoman empire:

http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/StyleStatus.htm

DC's Textile Museum has an online exhibit on Ottoman embroidery:

http://www.textilemuseum.org/fsg/index.html

However, after reading Lady Mary's letters, you may be curious about harems!  Here, too, is an article from the Topkapi Museum's web site.  This museum is affiliated with Bilkent University, a university in Turkey's capital, Ankara.

http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/~history/harem.html

Here is a site on paintings of harem life, a popular Orientalist genre:

http://www.harem.org.uk/

I will close with an example of this genre, Theodore Chasseriau's "Scene of the Harem, Moorish Dame in Bath."  This painting dates from 1854.


As you may see from Renoir's painting from 1872, this genre of art included paintings of Frenchwomen dressed in "harem" costumes.