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Voltaire Bio

Uploaded by CatLover on Aug 02, 2004

François Marie Arouet (who later assumed the name Voltaire) was born in Paris on November 21st 1694. The family was wealthy, his father was a notary and his mother maintained contacts with friends interested in belles-lettres and Deism.

From 1704 - 1711 François Marie was educated by the Jesuits at the College Louis-le-Grand, his later involvement with the writing and staging of plays may have been encouraged by the numerous plays, in Latin as well as French, that were staged at College Louis-le-Grand.

Despite his father's wishes that he train for a career in Law François Marie, after a short period of work in a legal office, chose to attempt to pursue a literary career. He soon began to fall in with questionable company and to cause offense through the power and sarcasm of his wit and poetry. Because of these tendencies his father, on several occasions, arranged for him to spend time away from Paris.

From about 1715 François Marie increasingly began moving in aristocratic circles including a famous salon-court that was maintained by the Duchesse du Maine at Sceaux. He became recognised in Paris as a brilliant and sarcastic wit - a lampoon of the French regent the Duc d'Orléans and also his being accused, (unjustly), of penning two distinctly libelous poems resulted in his imprisonment in the Bastille. This imprisonment being imposed following the composition of a lettre de cachet, an administrative order, issued at the request of powerful persons. François Marie was most aggrieved at this unjust sentence to imprisonment being imposed on him.

It was during his subsequent eleven month period of detention that François Marie Arouet / Voltaire completed his first dramatic tragedy, Oedipe. This dramatic work was based upon the play Oedipus Tyrannus attributable to the ancient Greek dramatist Sophocles. (It was during these times that François Marie adopted the pen name Voltaire). Voltaire's Oedipe opened at the Thétre Français in 1718 and received an enthusiastic response.

During his period of detention in the Bastille he had also begun to craft a poem centered on the life of Henry IV of France. An early edition of this work, which features an eloquent appeal for religious toleration, was printed anonymously in Geneva under the title of Poème de la ligue (Poem of the League, 1723). King Henry IV had been an Huguenot (protestant) claimant to the French throne but...

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Uploaded by:   CatLover

Date:   08/02/2004

Category:   Biographies

Length:   9 pages (1,966 words)

Views:   4856

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