Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète
- Language:
- French
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors
- Extent:
- ~20,400 words · 97 passages
Cite this work
- APAVoltaire. (n.d.). Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltaire/le-fanatisme-ou-mahomet-le-prophete
- MLAVoltaire. "Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltaire/le-fanatisme-ou-mahomet-le-prophete.
- ChicagoVoltaire. Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophète. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/voltaire/le-fanatisme-ou-mahomet-le-prophete.
What it is about
A tragedy of 1741 on religious fanaticism, built on a fictionalised episode from the life of Muhammad.
Context and history
The date and the context are needed. Voltaire had no first-hand knowledge of Islam, and the Mahomet of this play is not a historical figure but a stage character: an impostor manipulating others' faith for his own power. The declared intention was different — Voltaire dedicated the play to **Pope Benedict XIV**, and his contemporaries understood at once that the real target was Christian fanaticism, which he could not attack by name without going to prison. It has been read that way since the eighteenth century, and it has also been read as what it literally says, which offends many Muslims. Better to have both readings to hand than neither. Text in French: the original.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose légal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other maiginalia présent in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journcy from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we hâve taken steps to prcvcnt abuse by commercial parties, including placing lechnical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: Personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain fivm automated querying Do nol send automated queries of any sort to Google's System: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character récognition or other areas where access to a laige amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for thèse purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attributionTht GoogX'S "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informingpcoplcabout this project and helping them find + Keep it légal Whatever your use, remember that you are lesponsible for ensuring that what you are doing is légal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countiies. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, an