Ridgeway, Ashley 5/30/2013 Nancy McDonald, World Lit.

During the Enlightenment era there were a few major themes of the writers of that time period. These themes were centered on reason, knowledge, and rational thinking. In time the Catholic Churchs power was still in full swing and functioned throughout much of Europe. As this so-called reason emerged throughout the country it was beginning to rival faith and religion. So as a result the Enlightenment writers began to look at the world more critically and shown this in their writings. Moliere and Voltaire use satirical approaches in their writings to make fun of people, politics or popular issues. Both Moliere's Tartuffe and Voltaire's Candide stemmed from Enlightenment themes. To elaborate, in both stories the writers condemn the birthrights of Kings and Queens in the stories or so-called people with divine right. In both of the stories Tartuffe and Candide the main characters families are a part of the aristocrats. In Tartuffe, Orgon plays a wealthy father who can take care of his family and the beggar and bum, Tartuffe. Likewise in Voltaires story, Candide was also part both royalty even though he lacked a small percentage of the family tree he was so considered upper class. Another aspect of Enlightenment writers was to not focus the attention on the characters personality traits but to focus on their social status in the country, and therefore audiences dont often see these characters for themselves. Also to contribute to this thought, Candide was always looking for a friend and was rarely presented by himself because this would create room for the

character to have personal characteristics or monologues. During the Enlightenment era they focus on the similarities between the characters rather than the differences. An additional comparison is the fact that during the Enlightenment writers purposely had no sense of the environment and the surroundings. Throughout Voltaire's Candide, the main character Candide moves across the world however there is no depiction of where they are because the setting is supposed to be just the background. During the Enlightenment writers focused on the characters conversations, or political and situational issues. In conclusion both of these writers where a part of the enlightenment period and concurred that there were themes to this era such as reason, knowledge and rational thinking which went hand-in-hand with how is writers express themselves. In comparison the writers used satire to poke fun at social issues, politics and mainly religion and hierarchy. Yet both of the stories are good representations of how the Enlightenment inspired writers such as Moliere and Voltaire.