Satire is an age-old art, long before Taylor Swift wrote Mean, to get back at her critics, and Samantha Bee poked fun at the president's daughter for her hypocrisy, Moliere and Voltaire were using satire to mock policies and people, in power in order to enlighten society, while also not being killed for directly challenging the people in power.
Satire is a genre in literature that became especially powerful during the 17th century “Age of Enlightenment.” Satire ridicules people and religions, using tools such as exaggeration and wit to make the reader laugh but also think about what they are reading. While Moliere and Voltaire both utilized satire, they went about it in some similar but also very different ways. In Moliere’s Tartuffe, the author keeps the story clearly within the defined lines of satire. On the other hand, Voltaire’s Candide blurs the lines of satire and can …show more content…
Tartuffe is a play which is easily understood by reading it aloud to oneself but ultimately can only be fully experienced by watching it play out on a stage. Candide, on the other hand, is a satirical novel which was purposely written to be easily read. This simplification was done so that even the common man could understand it. This is not to say that the piece of work is in any way simple, Candide manages to simplify the flawed optimism of the Enlightenment through the mocking of the caricature of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz who proposed that everything happens for a reason, therefore this world is the best there is. Candide is also somewhat short, this was on purpose as well, because Voltaire believed this format would be best for keeping the reader's attention. Though the two pieces vary in format, both proved to be extraordinarily accessible for their time. Accessibility was so important for both works since the Enlightenment was centered on religious hypocrisy and the free-thinking of
Satire is a genre in literature that became especially powerful during the 17th century “Age of Enlightenment.” Satire ridicules people and religions, using tools such as exaggeration and wit to make the reader laugh but also think about what they are reading. While Moliere and Voltaire both utilized satire, they went about it in some similar but also very different ways. In Moliere’s Tartuffe, the author keeps the story clearly within the defined lines of satire. On the other hand, Voltaire’s Candide blurs the lines of satire and can …show more content…
Tartuffe is a play which is easily understood by reading it aloud to oneself but ultimately can only be fully experienced by watching it play out on a stage. Candide, on the other hand, is a satirical novel which was purposely written to be easily read. This simplification was done so that even the common man could understand it. This is not to say that the piece of work is in any way simple, Candide manages to simplify the flawed optimism of the Enlightenment through the mocking of the caricature of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz who proposed that everything happens for a reason, therefore this world is the best there is. Candide is also somewhat short, this was on purpose as well, because Voltaire believed this format would be best for keeping the reader's attention. Though the two pieces vary in format, both proved to be extraordinarily accessible for their time. Accessibility was so important for both works since the Enlightenment was centered on religious hypocrisy and the free-thinking of