Sade and the Narrative of Transgression

by Edited by David B. Allison , Mark S. Roberts , Allen S. Weiss

• ISBN13: 9780521032315
• ISBN10: 0521032318
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This major collection of essays on the Marquis de Sade encompasses a wide range of critical approaches to his Åuvre, including some of the most celebrated texts in Sade scholarship. It focuses on several distinctly contemporary areas of interest: the explicitly libidinal components of Sade's work and the effects they engender, the textual and narrative apparatus which supports these operations, the ethical and political concerns which arise from them, and the problematic issues surrounding the conceptual closure of representation. Sade is placed at the centre of current debates in literary and philosophical criticism, feminist and gender theory, aesthetics, rhetoric and eighteenth-century French cultural history, and this volume will be of interest to a wide range of readers across these disciplines.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The use value of D. A. F. Sade (An open letter to my current comrades)

Sade, or the philosopher-villain

Libidinal economy in Sade and Klossowski

A political minimalist

The Society of the Friends of Crime

Sade, mothers and other women

The encyclopedia of excess

'Sex', or, the misfortunes of literature

Structures of exchange, acts of transgression

Gender and narrative possibilities

Sade's literary space

Fantasizing Juliette

Select bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.