Voltaire: France's Greatest Enlightenment Writer

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Voltaire has been considered to be one of France's greatest Enlightenment writers. Voltaire enjoyed categories such as poetry, historical works, plays, and philosophical work. Voltaire began to show a promise as a writer in 1704, while receiving a great education at a famous college called College Louis-le-Grand. François-Marie Arouet is also known as Voltaire was born on November 21, 1694. He was born and raised in Paris, France. His parents were François Arouet and Marie Marguerite Daumand. Voltaire was the youngest of his five siblings. When Voltaire was just seven years old his mother, Marie Marguerite Daumand passed away. As a cause of his mother’s death Voltaire started becoming better friends with his free-thinking godfather known as Abbé de Châteauneuf. Voltaires godfather Abbé de Châteauneuf was a sponsor to Voltaire in multiple ways. After a while Voltaire started getting into some trouble and got exiled and thrown into prison. …show more content…
In poetry his most known pieces of poetry contain the awesome poems Henriade, and The Maid of Orleans. Henriade was written in 1723; while The Maid of Orleans started in 1730 it was never completely finished. Voltaire also had famous writings in the category “plays” such as Oedipus, which was first played in 1718. Voltaire followed Oedipus by a bunch of dramatic tragedies, including Mariamne, which was written in 1724. His Zaire was also a known play, which was written in 1732. Voltaire also had some more plays like Mahomet written in 1736 and Nanine written in 1749. The Age of Louis XIV written in 1751, and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations written in1756 were his known historical works. Voltaire's popular philosophic works were Micromégas written in 1752, Plato's Dream written in 1756, along with his popular satirical novel Candide written in 1759. In 1764, Voltaire published another important philosophical works, Dictionnaire
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