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Literary Devices
Definition of Allusion
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition
In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition
Key Examples in Candide
Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Religious Conflict :
Voltaire alludes to both religious conflicts in early modern Europe and ideas from classical philosophy in a brief scene set in Holland. When Candide escapes from the Bulgarian army and makes his way to Holland, he meets both a Protestant preacher and a kind Anabaptist:
“My friend,” said the orator to him, “do you believe the Pope to be Anti-Christ?”
“I have not heard it,” answered Candide; “but whether he be, or whether he be not, I want bread.”
“Thou dost not deserve to eat,” said the other. “Begone, rogue; begone, wretch; do not come near me again.” [...]
A man who had never been christened, a good Anabaptist, named James, beheld the cruel and ignominious treatment shown to one of his brethren, an unfeathered biped with a rational soul, he took him home [...]
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Chapter 4
Explanation and Analysis—Christopher Columbus:
Voltaire makes various allusions to the New World in a passage in which Professor Pangloss explains that his syphilis infection originated in Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas. The passage is also an example of situational irony:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“[It] was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not in an island of America caught this disease, which contaminates the source of life, frequently even hinders generation, and which is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have neither chocolate nor cochineal. We are also to observe that upon our continent, this distemper is like religious controversy, confined to a particular spot. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, the Japanese, know nothing of it [...]
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Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—The Castrati:
In a section of the novella in which the old woman tells the story of her sad life to the others on the boat sailing to the New World, Voltaire alludes to the castrati, men who were castrated before or during puberty in order to preserve their ability to sing in higher registers. In the old woman’s story, she is shocked, after being kidnapped and enslaved in North Africa, to find a European man. The man then tells his own story:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“ ‘I was born at Naples,’ said he, ‘there they geld two or three thousand children every year; some die of the operation, others acquire a voice more beautiful than that of women, and others are raised to offices of state. This operation was performed on me with great success and I was chapel musician to madam, the Princess of Palestrina.’
Chapter 18
Explanation and Analysis—El Dorado:
Voltaire employs rich imagery in his depiction of the fabled city of El Dorado in South America:
Unlock with LitCharts A+While waiting they were shown the city, and saw the public edifices raised as high as the clouds, the market places ornamented with a thousand columns, the fountains of spring water, those of rose water, those of liqueurs drawn from sugar-cane, incessantly flowing into the great squares, which were paved with a kind of precious stone, which gave off a delicious fragrancy like that of cloves and cinnamon.
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Chapter 22
Explanation and Analysis—French Society:
In his comedic depiction of upper-class French society, Voltaire employs metaphor, allusion, and satire. After leaving South America with some of the valuable gold and diamonds which he received in El Dorado, Candide travels to France, where, accompanied by Martin and the Abbé of Périgord, he visits a building where upper-class men engage in card-playing, debate, and prostitution. There, Candide asks a French scholar if he agrees with Pangloss’s argument, derived from Leibniz, that Earth is “the best of all possible worlds.” The scholar responds:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“I know nothing of all that; I find that all goes awry with me; that no one knows either what is his rank, nor what is his condition, what he does nor what he ought to do; and that except supper, which is always gay, and where there appears to be enough concord, all the rest of the time is passed in impertinent quarrels; Jansenist against Molinist, Parliament against the Church, men of letters against men of letters, courtesans against courtesans, financiers against the people, wives against husbands, relatives against relatives—it is eternal war.”
Related Themes:
