Sade's Sensibilities

Kate Parker and Norbert Sclippa (Eds.)

2014
222 pages
ISBN 9781611486469
Aperçus

Sade's Sensibilities tells a new story of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in European literature. Blending ideas about subjectivity, identity and natural philosophy with politics and pornography, D.A.F. de Sade has fascinated writers and readers for two hundred years, and his materialist account of the human condition has been widely influential in post-structuralism, nihilism, and feminism. This new collection of essays considers Sade's Enlightenment legacy, both within and beyond the narratives of radicalism and aberration that have historically marked the study of his oeuvre. From different points of view, these essays argue that Sade engaged with and influenced traditional Enlightenment paradigms - particularly those related to sensibility, subjectivity, and philosophy - as much as he resisted them. They thus recover a Sade more relevant, even foundational to our twenty-first century understanding of modernity, selfhood, and community. In Sade's Sensibilities Sade is no longer a solitary, peripheral radical, but an Enlightenment philosopher in his own right.

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Reviews:

"As many of the essays note, Sade has largely been used as a figurehead for libertine authors, while the details of his prolific oeuvre have typically been glossed over in favour of using him for shock value in discussing eighteenth-century debauchery. This collection does a good job of teasing out some of the nuances in his texts through close readings and the application of Enlightenment principles in vogue at the time. The essays analyze a few of Sade's lesser-known tales, but they primarily cover his major works, making the volume accessible to novices and aficionados alike."
-Melissa Deininger, Iowa State University; Eighteenth-Century Fiction (29.3), Spring 2017

"This volume aims to bring together two approaches to Sade, the first emphasizing him as a historically situated writer, and the second celebrating his texts' transformative and imaginative qualities. This is a laudable aim, not least because the presentation of Sade's radicalism by several influential twentieth-century critics often betrays a blindness to his intellectual tradition and context... this volume will stimulate fresh debate on this key Enlightenment figure"
-Thomas Wynn, Durham University; Oxford University Press Journals: French Studies, Volume LXIX, No. 4 (October 2015)

About the editors:

Kate Parker, professor and chair of English, teaches pre-1800 English and European cultural studies and feminism and sexuality studies at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse, a regional comprehensive university in the University of Wisconsin System.

Norbert Sclippa is professor of French at the College of Charleston.

Distributed by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Paperback: 9781611486483; eBook: 9781611486476