La Henriade avec des Variantes et des Notes. Et l’Effai sur le Poëme Epique.

VOLTAIRE,.

$300.00

Item Number: 81165

London : Jacob Tonsen, 1734.

Finely bound example of Voltaire’s epic poem La Henriade. Small octavo, original leather, gilt titles and tooling to the spine, marbled endpapers. In good condition. Text in French.

La Henriade is an epic poem written by the French Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire. According to Voltaire himself, the poem concerns and was written in honor of the life of Henry IV of France, and is a celebration of his life. The ostensible subject is the siege of Paris in 1589 by Henry III in consort with Henry of Navarre, soon to be Henry IV, but its themes are the twin evils of religious fanaticism and civil discord. It also concerns the political state of France. Voltaire aimed to be the French Virgil, outdoing the master by preserving Aristotelian unity of place—a property of classical tragedy rather than epic—by keeping the human action confined between Paris and Ivry.