Œuvres complètes de Voltaire (Complete Works of Voltaire) 51B

In the wide range of essays, poems and pamphlets contained in this volume we witness Voltaire exercising his polemical powers on a remarkable multiplicity of fronts, only a matter of months before he got involved in the Calas affair. Most notably, he offers a spirited defence of French classical theatre against English influence in "Appel à toutes les nations", he launches a fierce attack against Rousseau in "Lettres sur la Nouvelle Héloïse" and "Rescrit de l’empereur de la Chine", and exposes the injustice of the excommunication of actors in "Conversation de M. l’intendant des Menus". Confrontation between the embattled encyclopédistes and an increasingly confident and aggressive anti-philosophe faction in the Paris Parlement and Versailles also links a number of miscellaneous texts together in this volume.