Voltaire and the Sirven affair (1762-1772) / John Renwick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Renwick, John, author.

Series:

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment ; 2025:12.

Oxford University studies in the Enlightenment, 2634-8047 ; 2025:12

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sirven, Pierre-Paul, 1709-1777--Trials, litigation, etc.

Sirven, Pierre-Paul.

Sirven, Pierre-Paul, 1709-1777.

Voltaire, 1694-1778.

Voltaire.

Human rights--France--History--18th century.

Human rights.

Human rights--History.

France.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 280 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press ; Oxford : Voltaire Foundation, 2025.

Summary:

Voltaire's involvement with Sirven, has - for long - elicited laudatory judgements from French or Anglo-Saxon voices. If the former proclaimed that 'Voltaire avait une fois encore gagné' (as he had famously done with Calas), the latter have been even more fulsomely assertive : 'he secured a complete victory'; 'Sirven was in one important respect the most successful of Voltaire's human rights campaigns'. Such confidence seems strange, however, given that the topic has not received the coverage that it deserved in France, while - in the English-speaking world - it has merited not one single monograph. This study attempts to rectify such curious overstatements, and to propose conclusions that are more consonant with a good understanding of such a complex affair which was, however, emphatically not 'Calas bis'.

Contents:

Voltaire and the Sirven affair - why a study in English?

Introduction: Protestantism, political authority and toleration (1702-1762) - towards a lifting of the clouds

I. The origins of the affair (March 1760-March 1765)

Chapter 1. A Protestant family in hostile surroundings

Chapter 2. Voltaire, Protestantism and toleration

Chapter 3. Elisabeth, a troubled soul

II. Criminal justice and Voltaire in action (September 1766-January 1768)

Chapter 4. Legal and political defence of Sirven: the early stages

Chapter 5. The wait for the dépêches

Chapter 6. Voltaire's extrajudicial action: fanaticism, intolerance and the public

Chapter 7. Marmontel, Voltaire and the Bélisaire affair

III. Justice, politics and Enlightenment (March 1768-November 1771)

Chapter 8. Voltaire before the public

Chapter 9. Sirven confronts his judges

Chapter 10. Closing arguments

Chapter 11. La Croix carries the day

Afterword: Voltaire and the Sirven, 1765-1772

Appendix 1: Marianne Sirven to Jean-Pierre Ramond

Appendix 2: The demande de territoire

Appendix 3: Arrêt de la cour de parlement de Toulouse du 25 novembre 1771.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-272) and index

Other Format:

ebook version :

ISBN:

9781836245292

1836245297

OCLC:

1548373537

Publisher Number:

CIPO000300150