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This article focuses on Voltaire's "Candide." It might be argued that Voltaire's aesthetics are those of French classicism, the antithesis of carnival. His writing is spare and didactic, his norms rationalist. Paradox reflects for him not the richness but the wrongness of the universe. The catalogue of evils is appalling, the tone bitter. The inspiration of "Candide," is essentially negative. In "Candide," optimism is a universal superlative. The narrative is equally comprehensive. Epic, romance, and the fabulous voyage are parodied. The journey takes in the Old World, the New World, and Utopian Eldorado. The Eldoradan order in commerce, religion, politics, and science is presented with approval. But this world is mediated by the naive reactions of the protagonists, and the amiable ironies of the narrator. The carnival of "Candide," is principally one of destruction. There is however tremendous and unremitting energy. This appears in the speed of events, the frequent use of the dramatic present tense, the violence of the assaults, the force of imagination in the writing.