Volume 29, Number 8 · May 13, 1982
The Art of Dying
By Robert Darnton
Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France
by John McManners
Oxford University Press, 619 pp., $29.95
Voltaire's death was a major event in the eighteenth century. It did not merely signal the passing away of the archphilosophe of the Enlightenment; it was a drama, staged with consummate artistry by the last of the classical French tragedians, and it reveals more about eighteenth-century culture than any of the plays he wrote.
Review, 3600 words
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