Candide

"Candide" is the famous satire and best-known work by Voltaire. First published in 1759, "Candide" is the story of its central character who travels throughout Europe and South America experiencing and witnessing much misfortune on the way. It is within the clever construct of this narrative that Voltaire refutes the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, whose central idea was that life was the best of all possible worlds and that disasters, should they occur, were harbingers of better things to come. Voltaire found this philosophy insultingly ridiculous and within the humorous and satirical construct of this work he effectively exposes the idiocy of a philosophy that was so pervasive in his time.