Voltaire allégoriste: Essai sur les rapports entre conte et philosophie chez Voltaire (review)

REVIEWS 151 l'idée de donner en anglais, par exemple, les pages majeures de ses journaux et de ses essais. Frédéric Deloffre Université de Paris-Sorbonne Université de Géorgie-Athens, GA Alain Faudemay. Voltaire allégoriste: Essai sur les rapports entre conte et philosophie chez Voltaire. Fribourg: Editions universitaires, 1987. 118pp. With the immense body of critical literature already devoted to Voltaire, it takes an intrepid researcher indeed to tackle, once again, his novels and short stories. Alain Faudemay, undaunted by a mountain of previous research, has done precisely that in his highly original analysis of the tensions and ambiguities which inhere in the conte. Unlike most of the conventional approaches to Voltaire's contes, Faudemay's approach begins by pointing to a paradox: philosophy and the genre of the conte seem to be diametrically opposed. The truths intuited through the dialectical discourse need no embellishment in the form of a fictional superstructure, be it a novel or short story. The fact that Voltaire had recourse to this art form raises questions, therefore, about the Voltairean appropriation of the conte—for his own ends. In his survey of a half dozen of the most popular contes—with special emphasis on Candide, Micromégas, and Zadig—Faudemay concentrates on the use by Voltaire of allegorical modes of discourse. He points out astutely that this is a bizarre template for Voltaire because the employment of allegory, with its literal and figurative aspects, is problematic philosophically and is, moreover, a rhetorical tool favoured by Roman Catholic Biblical exegesis. Voltaire's choice of this churchly pedagogical tool, however, is not accidental . The allegorizing of the conte in Voltaire's hands is a powerful weapon with two functions. The most obvious, of course, is the caricaturing of the theological use of allegory, including its literal and figurative components. The second is more complex and paradoxical. For Voltaire, allegory is the symbol of the oscillation between the attractions of the conte and the purposes of philosophy. In a sense, the conte becomes the battleground on which Voltaire's existentialist anxieties are played out. It is a genre, however, with which he is never completely comfortable, owing to the heavy agenda which he imposes upon it. The best parts of Faudemay's analysis of Voltaire's contes come when the author leaves the rarefied atmosphere of his deconstructionist approach (which occasionally involves a prose style of formidable complexity—e.g., p. 41), and 152 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION explores the interstices of the corpus of the Voltairean conte, highlighting its allegorical intent. Although Faudemay surveys paths that have been well trodden by legions of scholars (to which he pays proper homage in more than three hundred heavily annotated footnotes), he manages to shed many an illuminating ray of light on texts which gain a new iridescence thanks to the author's refreshing analysis . One of his most valuable insights is the observation that characters in the Voltairean conte are interchangeable and are therefore subordinate to the ideas which are being advertised. Their place in a given conte is what determines their importance, not any intrinsic quality which they possess. Again, the action of the dramatis personae in the contes is not time-dated but exists in a surreal world. Faudemay also notes that bringing characters together, as Voltaire does at the end of Candide, reminds one of the theatrical comedy in which the final scene assembles the actors. The actors in the conte, however, undergo trials and tribulations which cannot be reproduced on the stage. For Voltaire, therefore, the conte is the medium in which the metaphysical problems which afflicted him are to be deployed in a contrived but convenient genre. The dialectical tension comes from the fact that, while the subject matter of the conte is spiritually and intellectually elevated, the events depicted in the conte tend to obstruct and obfuscate our understanding of this high discourse. Ambiguity and paradox are Voltaire's weapons against smugness. The pursuit of truth, as Faudemay mentions, is paralleled by Candide's pursuit of Cunégonde. The rationalizations proffered by the inquisitors at the auto-daf é in Candide are not dissimilar to Pangloss's various obiter dicta...