Brief Bibliography for the Study of Candide

The Voltaire Society of America often receives requests for basic information about Voltaire's most famous text, the philosophical tale, Candide (1759). The following bibliography provides references for a only few basic resources for beginning study of this text. For more in-depth study, please consult the bibliography included in the volume listed below, Approaches to Teaching Voltaire's Candide, or the exhaustive bibliographie compiled by Frédéric Spear, Bibliographie analytique des écrits relatifs à Voltaire, 1966-1990 (Oxford, 1992).

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A bilingual edition of Candide:

Voltaire, Candide, A Dual-Language Book, translated and with an Introduction by Shane Weller (New York: Dover Publications, 1993).

The Norton critical edition of Candide provides a good selection of critical readings that contextualize the work and record a number of diverging opinions thereof:

Voltaire, Candide or Optimism, a new Translation, Backgrounds, Criticism, translated and edited by Robert M. Adams (New York: W. W. Norton & Company "A Norton Critical Edition," 1966).

Including:

Backgrounds:
Summary: The Intellectual Backgrounds
Voltaire, "Well, Everything is Well"
Gustave Lanson, "Voltaire at Les Délices and at Ferney"
André Morize, "The 'Moment' of Candide and the Ideas of Voltaire"
A. O. Lovejoy, "The Principle of Plenitude and Eighteenth-Century Optimism"

Criticism:
Georges Ascoli, "Voltaire: The Storyteller's Art"
René Pomeau, "Providence, Pessmism and Absurdity"
I. O. Wade, "Voltaire and Candide"
J. G. Weightman, "The Quality of Candide"
Robert M. Adams, "Candide on Work and Candide as Outsider"

The Climate of Controversy:
Voltaire's Faith:

Voltaire, "Letter on the Subject of Candide"
William Blake
André Delattre

Voltaire's Greatness
Joseph de Maistre
Victor Hugo
The Goncourts

Voltaire's Coherence
Emile Faguet
Daniel Mornet

Voltaire's Humanity
Madame de Staël
Anatole France
Gustave Flaubert

Bourgeois or Nihilist?
William F. Bottiglia
Ludwig W. Kalm
Gustave Flaubert

For a series of introductory essays on a wide variety of topics, see the volume issued by the Modern Language Association of America:

Approaches to Teaching Voltaire's Candide, ed. Renée Waldinger (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1987).

Including:

Patrick Henry, The Modernity of Candide"
Clifton Cherpack, "Candide as a Literary Form"
John C. O'Neal, "Interpolated Narrative in Voltaire's Candide"
Frederick M. Keener, "Centering Candide"
Suzanne L. Pucci, "Voltaire's Candide: Distortion in the Age of Reason"
Ruth Plaut Weinreb, "The Voyage in Candide"
Theodore E. D. Braun, "Interpreting Candide: The Anvil of Controversy"
Anthony R. Pugh, "A Three-Tiered Approach to Candide
Cassandra Mabe, "On Teaching the Ironical Satire of Candide
Janet T. Letts, "A Tale in Five Acts"
Mary Lee Archer, "Candide in a World Literature Course"
Jeremy Popkin, "Candide in a History Survey Course"
Paul Sawyer, "The Names in Candide"
Patricia Murphy, "Voltaire's Candide and Berstein's Candide"
Ann W. Engar, "Using Candide in a Reading and Writing Course for Freshmen"
Ralph Engelman, "Adolescents Encounter Voltaire: Candide as an Eighth-Grade History Text"
James Andreas, "Candide as Comic Conte"
Jean Sareil, "The Comic Writing in Candide
Herbert Josephs, "Candide: The Dubious Wisdom of Satire"
Otis Fellows, "Candide in the Context of Voltaire's Work"
Richard A. Brooks, "Some Aspects of the Philosophical Background of Candide"
Jean A. Perkins, "Intellectual Ideas Raised in Candide"
Oscar A. Haac, "Candide: Or, Comedy in Utopia"
Paul Ilie, "Candide as History: The Iberian-American Infrastructure"