Speaker:  Nicholas Cronk, M.A., D.Phil. (University of Oxford) , Hon.D.Litt. (McGill University) is an author, professor, and pioneering researcher.  He is one of the world’s pre-eminent Enlightenment scholars while standing at the forefront of digital humanities technology.

Lecture description: Every modern author has a special relationship with ‘his’ or ‘her’ manuscripts. In the case of Voltaire, even the extent of this corpus is still not entirely known: the first attempt to catalogue all of Voltaire’s manuscripts has only just begun. It is already possible to say that the manuscripts that we possess – that is to say, those that have survived – bear witness to Voltaire’s celebrity status. The phenomenon of the celebrity autograph is something that begins in the eighteenth century: the public wants to feel the presence of the great writer. At the same time, and this is also a consequence of celebrity, Voltaire’s manuscripts are endlessly copied and recopied, for a range of different reasons. These seemingly less prestigious copies are none the less extremely illuminating. In judging the importance of Voltaire’s manuscripts, the aesthetic criterion is not necessarily the most important. 

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