Essay Comparing Candide and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein -- comparison

Comparing Voltaires Candide and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein Voltaires Candide and Mary Shelleys Frankenstein are classics of horse opera literature, in large part, beca employment they both speak about the situation of beingness human. However, they are also important because they are both representative of the several(prenominal) cultural movements during which they were written - the Enlightenment and the Romantic Era. As a answer of this inheritance, they have polar tones and messages, just as the Enlightenment and Romanticism had different tones and messages. But, it is not enough to merely say that they are different because they are linked. The intellectual movement from which Frankenstein emerged had its origins in the intellectual movement from which Candide emerged. By examining for each one of these works from the context of these intellectual movements, the progression in tone from light-hearted optimism in Candide to a heavier brooding doom in Frankenstein can be e xplained as being an extension of the progression from the Enlightenment to the Era of Romanticism. The Enlightenment had its root in the scientific and philosophical movements of the 17th century. It was, in large part, a rejection of the faith- ground medieval initiation view for a way of thought based on structured inquiry and scientific understanding. It stressed individualism, and it rejected the churchs mark of the secular activities of men. Among the movements luminaries were Descartes, Newton, and Locke. They, among others, stressed the individuals use of reason to explain and understand the world about himself in all of its aspects. Important principles of the Enlightenment included the use of science to examine all aspects of life (this was labeled reason),... ...The motivation is never satisfied for the reader, for Shelleys perception of society after the Enlightenment is a bleak place where human needs are supplanted by the massive focus on reason alone. This stand s in sharp contrast to the endpoint of Candide. While the young man is constantly denied the company of his one current love, Cunegonde, throughout the work, in the end he finds her and finds satisfaction in a life near his friends as a farmer. The Enlightenment found positive hope in a dark age through the electric potential of the progress of human society, but to the Romantics, this improved world was less than positive if untouched by human elements such as love and imagination. workings CitedShelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York Bantam Books, 1991.Voltaire. Candide. In Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories.Trans. Donald Frame, New York Penguin Group, 1961.