Abstract: The second half of L’Ingénu presents difficulties to specialists of Voltaire. With the adventures of Mlle de Saint-Yves, terminating in her painful, tear-filled death scene, the caustic storyteller of the first chapters seems to transform himself into a sensitive, naïve and altogether conventional novelist. Confronted with this disturbing invasion of the anti-novel by the novel, firm positions have been adopted: condemnation of the work judged to be deficient because of its duality; “ironic” interpretation of the sentimental elements; ...
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