Voltaire et le parlement de Paris

This article in a special volume uses a new method to throw light on Voltaire's authorial strategies in his Histoire du Parlement de Paris. It is cited by the modern editor of the text, John Renwick, as one of only two essential pieces on it (Hist du parl, VF edition 2006, p. 59 described as 'essential' and p. 99 where he summarises another contribution from this article]. Its method is original: it compares what Voltaire actually wrote with what we know he knew but chose not to publish, and what we know his contemporaries knew (which enables us to deduce what contemporaries including Voltaire knew, and to compare it with what risked publishing. The articles drws on the detailed research by its author on the Parlement in this period, on which he is an expert, unlike the literary scholars who have tacked the problems of authorial intentions ina theoretical ways. In this historically grounded way, it is possible to show how Voltaire made clear choices about what to say, and what to leave out. This clarifies his intentions for us. The article amongst other things explains his turning away from politics with dashed hopes of reform, characterised by the phrase, 'one must cultivate one's garden', and revesals his books as very strategically composed to focus on his historically distorted main aim of a polemic in favour of judicial reform. Original research, 29 notes.