SOURCE: Braun, Theodore E. D. “Chaos, Contingency, and Candide.” In 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, vol. 6, edited by Kevin L. Cope, pp. 199-209. New York: AMS Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Braun examines the themes of disorder and chaos in Voltaire's Candide.

Voltaire has proven to be a formidable obstacle to many modern critical approaches; not impervious, but a kind of unmovable object successfully resisting an irresistible force. Few indeed have been the scholars who have applied to his works the methods of recent approaches such as structuralism, deconstruction, or chaos theory (of course, with the latter being scarcely a decade old, this is perhaps to be expected). Whatever the cause, the effect is clear, and in terms of chaos theory, Voltaire appears to be virginal: I have not found in the MLA bibliography any critic examining any work of his from this...