Before I began reading Candide I read the section entitled “A Note on Names.” It described how Voltaire made a play on certain names he used in the novel. I found it amusing, and continued on and began reading the story. While reading I noticed how the names seemed to accurately describe the characters. For instance, Candide, from the Latin candidus, means pure and Candide was a very noble and honest character. Another example is Pangloss is derived from the Greek ‘pan’ (all) ‘glossa’ (tongue), so Pangloss is ‘all tongue’ or rather ‘all talk’. “The name suggests ‘one who glosses everything’, and Voltaire in his notebooks accuses those ‘who speak in order to say nothing’ of panglossie.” This lends itself to my surmise that Pangloss was just talking because people were listening, and he was rather full of it. In fact in the end of the book “Pangloss conceded that he had suffered horribly, all his life, but having once maintained that everything was going splendidly he would continue to do so, while believing nothing of the kind.” All of the characters seemed rather suspended in their personalities, which sparked a thought of déjà vu in me. It took me a while to place it, but I finally realized that Candide reminded me a little of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in the way it was written. Each segment belonged to a story of one person or another, and all included a journey. The characters are named after their personalities (or occupations), and there is always a sense of competition amongst them in who has had it worse , much like Chaucer’s story telling competition in the Tales. Why Voltaire even included a story telling competition in his work “why not amuse yourself and invite each passenger to tell his story;” (stated by the old woman to prove her point that everybody is a miserable wretch). It really made me wonder if Chaucer was where Voltaire got his inspiration for this tale. Does anybody else think Voltaire might be a more modern Chaucer?
If you don't know much about the Canterbury Tales, here is a link with a little explaination to help you decide. The Canterbury Tales
I found it very interesting how the character's names relate to their personalities. I have not yet completed reading Candide so your post has given me further insight into the story. Also, I like the comparison between Voltaire and Chaucer. It is possible to see Voltaire as a modern Chaucer considering they were both European writers and philosophers of their time. However, there are distinct differences in their literature which probably can be somewhat attributed to the dissimilarity of the times in which they wrote.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you about the differences between their writing. I think another possible reason is because Chaucer focused his writing on the religious perspectives of the time, whereas Voltaire makes a farce of religion in his writing. I'm sure this can be attributed to his Enlightenment ideals, as we learned in class today.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest similarity between Candide and The Canterbury Tales that I noticed was the way in which both Voltaire and Chaucer pointed out the corruption of the religious characters. In Candide, Brother Girofleo confesses the ills of the people in the monastery when he says "...The monastery is rife with jealousies, faction and ill-feeling. It is true, I have preached a few wretched sermons which brought me a little money, half of which the prior has stolen from me: the rest I use to pay for the girls; but when I get back to the monastery in the evening I feel like dashing my brains against the dormitory walls; all my fellow friars are in the same situation" (73). In The Canterbury tales, Chaucer created his religious characters in a strikingly similar way. The Friar sleeps around with women and makes friends with wealthy men, The Pope spends more time eating and hunting rather than praying, and The Pardoner caries around fake relics and cheats people out of their money. All of these religious figures demonstrate corruption, and it provides a bit of dark humor to the two literary works. Sparknotes has a great summary of the characters from The Canterbury Tales for those who aren't familiar with Chaucer's work.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sparknotes.com/lit/canterbury/characters.html