Picaresque novel can simply refer to an episodic recounting of the adventures of an anti-hero on the road. Laurence Sterne's "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" (1761-1767) and "A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" (1768) each have strong picaresque elements. Voltaire's French novel "Candide" (1759) contains elements of the picaresque. An interesting variation on the tradition of the picaresque is "The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan" (1824), a satirical view on early 19th-century Persia, written by a British diplomat, James Morier. Elements of the picaresque novel are found in Charles Dickens’s "The Pickwick Papers" (1836–37). Gogol occasionally used
Denis Diderot Dressing Gown") up to the heady "D'Alembert's Dream" ("Le Rêve de d'Alembert") (composed 1769), a philosophical dialogue in which he plunges into the depths of the controversy as to the ultimate constitution of matter and the meaning of life. "Jacques le fataliste" (written in 1773, but not published until 1792 in German and 1796 in French) is similar to "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey" in its challenge to the conventional novel's structure and content. The dialogue "Rameau's Nephew" (French: "Le Neveu de Rameau") is a "farce-tragedy" reminiscent of the "Satires" of Horace, a favorite classical author of Diderot's whose