Voltaire's Fiction

Voltaire's fiction uses the philosophical tale to bring questions of conduct and judgment into briskly moving stories. Candide follows a young traveller through repeated reversals, while Zadig presents a succession of tests involving justice and appearances. Micromégas changes the scale of the encounter, using visitors from distant worlds to expose human pretensions. Irony arises from the distance between what characters claim to know and what their experiences reveal. Their brief episodes give philosophical disagreement the movement and immediacy of storytelling.