Abstract
<italic>Œdipe</italic>, Voltaire’s first tragedy, has been interpreted as rejection of classical aesthetics and especially as a statement of the author’s attitude in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, favouring the position of the latter. If examined closely, however, the tragedy as well as its various paratexts reveal a network of arguments and intertextual references that is by far more complex. Even if his tragedy undoubtedly shows that he is well informed about the various ‘modernist’ criticisms of its antique subject, Voltaire does not draw the conclusions that the critics suggested and that other playwrights such as Antoine Houdar de La Motte put into action, rather, he ‘recycles’ aspects and fragments of classical French tragedy and thus merges enlightened <italic>philosophie</italic> and classicist aesthetics.
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