International audience While the brochure is an ephemeral product, it plays a leading role in the literary quarrels of the eighteenth century. Voltaire's predilection for this widely devalued medium allows us to discover a little-known aspect of his literary strategies, and testifies to his great mastery of the tools at his disposal to advance the cause of reason. This is not the least of the paradoxes of a man who otherwise venerated the great authors of the “siècle de Louis XIV.”