Voltaire

Biography

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet on November 21, 1694 in Paris France. He was the son of Francois Arouet, a notary, and Marie Marguerite D’Aumard. Voltaire spent most of his life in Paris until his exile to England. He was exiled by a man named Chevalier de Rohan, a nobleman.

While in exile Voltaire was greatly impressed with the monarch system which England used. He like the freedoms he had there in speech and religion. Voltaire wrote a “fictional document about the English government entitled the Lettres philosophiques (Philosophical letters on the English).”(1) Voltaire created much controversy with this document being as it shined upon the English system being more advanced than the French system, espically in the areas of religion.

After many years of moving and writing/experimenting with Marquise du Châtelet about natural sciences, Voltaire returned to Paris. It had been twenty-eight years since his last visit to Paris. After seeing one of his own plays being preformed he started writing another tragedy. He wrote until he became ill and died in 1778. “He was buried in the Abbey of Scellères, and his body was transferred to the Panthéon on July 10, 1791, during the French Revolution. In 1814, after the first fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the House of Bourbon monarchy, Voltaire's bones were removed from the Pantheon and destroyed. His heart is preserved at La Comedie Francaise”(1)

Works

• Candide

Resources

Voltaire at encyclopedia.com

Voltaire at Wikipedia

Works Cited

1. Voltaire "Voltaire." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Feb 2006