Disabled Powers

Download or read book Disabled Powers written by Robin Howells and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-10-16 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a reading of the Romans et Contes of Voltaire in the light of Bakhtin's concept of the Carnivalesque. Part I of this study establishes a paradigm for the twenty-six Contes. It focuses on generic patterns and a thematics of disablement. Part II offers carnivalesque readings of two tales, Le Monde comme il va and Candide. The last Part considers successively six of the later Contes, including L'Ingénu and Jenni, and the historical changes in consciousness that they reflect. The shift towards bourgeois realism is evident in the rise of sentiment and the patriarchal family on the one hand, materialism on the other. These tales exhibit an increasingly deep ambivalence towards corporality. In conclusion the study traces the changing forms of the carnivalesque figure, from geometrical to vitalist, within the Contes as a whole.