Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Complete Works of Voltaire) 63C

First published in 1767, Voltaire's satirical tale "L'Ingenu" was an immediate success. It was, Voltaire observed to his publisher, even better than "Candide" (in that it was more realistic), and readers - from Voltaire's era through to the present day, have accounted it one of his most entertaining works. Imitating a popular literary convention, the conte charts the introduction of an outsider into French society - a Huron who has arrived in Brittany. In the Huron's ensuing clashes with the church and the political administration, the naive gaze of this 'uncivilized' observer exposes absurdity and hypocrisy. Setting the story in the late seventeenth century, Voltaire offers a criticism of life under Louis XIV, as well as an allegory of eighteenth-century religious intolerance. Composed during the period of Voltaire's campaign against injustice of the sort perpetrated on Calas, Sirven and La Barre, "L'Ingenu" may be seen as portraying the type of the innocent individual persecuted by the state.