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Micromegas and Other Short Fictions |
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| Book: Paperback | 5.07 x 7.79in | 208 pages | ISBN 9780140446869 | 27 Aug 2002 | Penguin Classic | 18 - AND UP |
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Somewhere between tales and polemics, these funny, ribald, and inventive pieces show Voltaire doing what he does best: brilliantly challenging received wisdom, religious intolerance, and naïve optimism. Traveling through strange environments, Voltaire's protagonists are educated, often by surprise, into the complexities and contradictions of their world. Arriving on Earth from the star Sirius, the gigantic explorer Micromégas discovers a diminutive people with an inflated idea of their own importance in the universe. Babouc in "The World as It Is" learns that humanity is equally capable of barbarism and remarkable altruism. Other characters include a little-known god of infidelity, a pretentious graduate who invites a savage to dinner, and an Indian fakir who puts up with a bed of nails to gain the adoration of his female disciples. These "fables of reason" challenge the assumptions of reader and protagonist alike.
Micromegas
Introduction
Chronology of Voltaire's Life and Times
Further Reading
Note on the Texts
Translator's Note
Contes
Cuckoldage
The One-eyed Porter
Cosi-Sancta
Micromegas
The World As It Is
Memnon
Letter from a Turk
Plato's Dream
The History of the Travels of Scarmentado
The Consoler and the Consoled
The Story of a Good Brahmin
Pot-Pourri
An Indian Incident
Lord Chesterfield's Ears
Melanges
Account of the Illness, Confession, Death and Apparition of the Jesuit Berthier
Dialogue between a Savage and a Graduate
Dialogue between Ariste and Acrotal
The Education of Daughters
Wives, Submit Yourselves to Your Husbands
Dialogue between the Cock and the Hen
Conversation between Lucian, Erasmus and Rabelais, in the Elysian Fields
Notes
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