Agathocles & the Duke of Alencon & the Two Wine Casks de Voltaire

Agathocles & the Duke of Alencon & the Two Wine Casks

Voltaire

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 29 mai 2013

These two short plays and an opera libretto were penned by one of the greatest French writers, Voltaire. In AGATHOCLES the two sons of the King of Syracuse (Agathocles) strive for the hand of the same girl, and the elder is killed by the younger. The ruler can only avenge his loss by sacrificing his remaining son--but doing so would mean the end of his dynasty. THE DUKE OF ALENCON tells a similar tale in medieval France. Two princely brothers, Alencon and Nemours, both love Adelaide; their murderous rage for each other threatens to tear the country apart. Tragedy is only averted through the action of a servant who loves them both. In THE TWO WINE CASKS, a spurned priest of Bacchus switches the wine cups at a wedding to avenge himself on the woman he loves, who's marrying another. The enchanted vintage makes her hate her husband-to-be. Three great dramas of jealousy and its corrosive effects on the relations between men and women."

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François-Marie Arouet (1694 - 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church and Christianity as a whole and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays and historical and scientific works. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma and the French institutions of his day.