Similarities Between Voltaire And Rousseau

Words: 1382
Pages: 6

When discussing different authors from around the world or even in the same country, you never fully realize the overlap that takes place in almost all aspects. From the impact of an author’s work to the actually year that author died, there is almost always some correlation. When looking at Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau we see that while each author had an overlap with the time that they were alive, they ended up contributed to different eras of literature. They are often known for their similarities with both fueling the French Revolution and always irritating people to the point of facing legal troubles, yet the way they translated their ideas and life experiences into literary works differed in several ways. Voltaire being in the Enlightenment Era or the Age of Logic resulted in characters who used logic over emotion, with those characters who used logical thinking as the best characters. Whereas Rousseau contributed to the Romanticism Era by showcasing characters who were driven by emotions and just that, making most of his overarching themes prevalent in his works to trump logic with emotion.