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Holding a Mirror to Fiction: Voltaire and the History of Tom Jones 1
Author(s) -
LANGILLE EDOUARD
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal for eighteenth‐century studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.129
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 1754-0208
pISSN - 1754-0194
DOI - 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2011.00467.x
Subject(s) - parallels , literature , art history , art , dimension (graph theory) , mechanical engineering , mathematics , pure mathematics , engineering
This paper sets out some striking parallels between Voltaire's life and events in Fielding's Tom Jones , a work that inspired Candide . I argue that the autobiographical dimension latent in Candide derives from the way Voltaire saw his own life story in terms of Fielding's fiction, revisited and corrigé by the contemporary translator Pierre‐Antoine de La Place.