Voltaire, Précis du siècle de Louis XV [Summary of the Age of Louis XV]

Janet Godden (University of Oxford); James Hanrahan (Trinity College Dublin)

Ed. by Síofra Pierse, University College Dublin, Jenny Mander, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.04: French Writing and Culture: Eighteenth-Century and the Enlightenment, 1700-1800.
Vol. editors: Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge), Síofra Pierse (University College Dublin), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1768

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Historical representation

Resources

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Voltaire’s

Précis du siècle de Louis XV

is not as well known as it should be for a number of reasons. First, in historiographical terms, Enlightenment history has never recovered from the rise of historicism and the latter’s critique of Enlightenment presentism and universalist pretensions (Volpilhac-Auger, 2009; Force, 2009). Second, the reign of Louis XV – great-grandson of

Louis-le-Grand

– has been forgotten somewhat in the history of the French eighteenth century, which is generally viewed as the age of the

philosophes

and a prelude to the French Revolution (Jones, 2002). Third, and most importantly, Voltaire’s history of the age of Louis XV was not a work that he planned and composed in a coherent way, but instead it emerged from the development of other works, as an…

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2939 words

Citation: Godden, Janet, James Hanrahan. "Précis du siècle de Louis XV". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 January 2022 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=21520, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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