Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cultivating Our Garden, Daniela Chavez

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Candide by Voltaire promotes social reform in areas dealing with injustice and corrupt power–especially in religious organizations. One biographical book, one master of arts thesis, and two literary criticism essays were read to further expand the reader’s understanding of Candide. The impact religious organizations had on Voltaire and on European societies, their insincerity, and the abuse of their power sparked a fervent desire in Voltaire to criticize such institutions in order to reinvigorate the rights and freedoms of citizens and eliminate the abuses that societies continued to bear. The last phrase in the novel reflects Voltaire’s call to speak …

Voltaire, A Modern-Day Realist, Sebastian Valdiviezo

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Voltaire, arguably one of the most influential and crucial characters during the Enlightenment period. He was able to implement his ideologies while criticizing social norms in many of his literary works. Influenced by the many fortunes and tragedies of his time, he was able to transform these events and constitute them into a philosophy that changed the world forever. Challenging the ideas of his time, Voltaire writes Candide to criticize the optimistic ideologies held by many of the other philosophers of his time.

Many would agree in calling Candide a guideline into a small overview of Voltaire’s philosophy. He constantly …

Voltaire The Feminist, Esdras Castaneda

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

Voltaire was not the common Enlightened philosopher. No, he was one of the great ones. And especially critical in the fight for social justice and equality for women. Voltaire did not write about women. Typically, women were seen as weak, fragile, had pale skin, and were very thin. But Voltaire wrote about them in the exact opposite way. They were as strong, resilient, and brave as any man. And they were buxom, plump, and provocative. Voltaire purposefully writes this way to switch the gender roles; to show that women could be anything a man could be. That they could be …