SOURCE: Carr, Thomas M. “Sharing Grief/Initiating Consolation: Voltaire's Letters of Condolence.” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 25 (1996): 131-46.

In the essay below, Carr examines Voltaire's approach to condolences as a social form and a philosophical problem. Carr demonstrates how Voltaire's correspondence reveals the author's facility with recognized social forms of writing, and his efforts to connect himself personally to his correspondent's loss. Voltaire's means of offering consolation, Carr argues, also reflect and illuminate his positions on optimism and the powers and limitations of philosophy.

The letter of condolence has generally been neglected by students of epistolary discourse¹ in spite of being located at the intersection of a number of recent critical concerns. Interest among historians of death is shifting from the ars moriendi that prepared the dying for a holy death to the grief of those who mourn the deceased.² Second, letters of condolence raise the problem of the...