Question

Why was Voltaires use of satire effective

Answer 1

As a literary device, irony is effective because it calls for restraint. The satirist who depends upon it never descends to railing or to sarcasm; he expects his audience to get the point. ... Voltaire used them ironically with fine comic effect to advance his satire of injustice, crime, and folly.

Answer 2

Voltaire highly esteemed his verses and called himself a poet (we must point out that in the eighteenth century, the concept of poet included those who wrote poetry and those who were dramatists); he was considered in his century as the successor of Corneille and Racine, sometimes even as a winner; his pieces had an immense success and the author knows the consecration in 1778 when, in the scene of the French Comedy, Clairon crowns his bust with laurels, in front of an enthusiastic audience.