Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Complete Works of Voltaire) 49B

Voltaire’s "Ode sur la mort de la princesse de Bareith" laments the death of Frederick the Great’s sister and the horrors of the Seven Years War. Norman French, Greeks and Arabs struggle for control of Syracuse in "Tancrède", a chivalric tragedy with a new verse form, dedicated to Mme de Pompadour, the unofficial protector of the "Encyclopédie". "Socrate", another unconventional play mixing tragedy and comedy, is an allegory of the persecution of Diderot and his enterprise. Voltaire’s most scathing attack on the philosophes’s opponents takes the form of a practical joke: the announcement, in the "Relation de Berthier", of the death of the editor of the "Journal de Trévoux".