L'Ingénu
A young Huron raised in Canada comes ashore in Brittany in 1689, is identified as the long-lost nephew of the local prior, and proceeds through baptism, courtship and an appeal to Versailles applying plain reason to every French custom put in front of him. An attachment to the girl the church has just made his godmother, and a word spoken for the Huguenots, land him in the Bastille beside a Jansenist who undertakes his education. Written while Voltaire was campaigning against the judicial killings that followed the Calas affair, and darker than the tales before it.
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Lineage
- influenced by ↑ Lettres persanes
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Plot structure
Symbol / motif
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Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 59% · 15 shared
- 52% · 12 shared
- 49% · 13 shared
- 49% · 12 shared
- 49% · 12 shared
- 49% · 11 shared