Successful Satire within Volatire's "Candide"

The Enlightenment was a period of time in European history when English and French philosophers created new outlooks on life. Leibniz was one of these philosophers and he introduced the idea of optimism. Optimism was described as believing that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" . In Candide, Voltaire writes a successful satire of optimism because Candide includes the two main components of satire; parody and irony. Parody is "[a] …

…to its success as a satire. Candide is a successful satire because it attacks human folly, which in Voltaire's opinion was optimism. Candide is a collection of parodied and ironic behaviors and situations which sum up the triumph of a successful satire. Satiric literature was extremely popular in Voltaire's time and to write such a successful satire as Voltaire did is extremely difficult. Because Candide is so successfully satiric, it has become a world-renowned classic.