SADE

by John Phillips

This is a lively and accessible introduction to the Marquis de Sade's four most notorious novels: 120 Days of Sodom, Philosophy in the Boudoir, Justine and Juliette. Informed by a wide range of contemporary theories, John Phillips’s controversial study challenges conventional perspectives on the notorious 'pornographer' and suggests new ways of reading his most shocking narratives. Setting all four novels in their historical and biographical context, Phillips provides a comprehensive and highly readable analysis of works that have exercised an enormous influence on literature, art and cinema in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Clearly written and accessible to the general reader, this study provides an indispensable guide to the creative achievements of the libertine’s libertine.

216 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2001

Reviews

[Emily]

John Phillips,' Sade: The Libertine Novels, seeks to introduce the more controversial works of the Marquis de Sade to a new generation of English-language readers. He works to recover these controversial texts from the marginalized places they have been relegated to by "censoring discourses" and contains a chapter on each of these four works: Les 120 Journees de Sodome, La Philosopy dans le Boudoir, Justine, L'Histoire de Juliette. He situates each of these works in their philosophical and historical contexts, as well as within the context of Sade's experiences to argue that the essential Sadeian "project is essentially that of a quest for an impossible object, formulated unconsciously as a transcendence not of the soul but of the body."

Phillips includes a detailed biography of Sade's life, pieced together primarily from the letters he himself wrote, as well as from those of people who took issue with his behaviors and writing. Of interest is the emphasis on Sade's excellent education and rigorous intellectual background that allowed him to produce a number of books, novellas, short stories and plays, most of which were entirely conventional in their themes and material. Phillips neglects neither Sade's personal life, his academic pursuits, nor the scandalous behaviors that resulted in imprisonment for long periods of his life. Phillips discusses the philosophies underpinning Sade's work, including atheism, isolation, self-interest, materialism, and natural/constructed aspects of human behavior.

In terms of the reception of Sade's work, Phillips interestingly argues that "the sex monsters of Sade's fiction who mutilate and kill for sexual gratification are beyond all sympathy or understanding, because unless sex is directly linked to procreation we are conditioned to see it as selfish and gratuitous ... the sex maniac kills for sexual pleasure alone and so is intolerable according to a moral code which is firmly rooted in a puritanical hatred of any form of hedonism." This consideration of the ingrained morals of a reading audience presents a careful evaluation of the psychological discomfort encountered in reading Sade's libertine works and offers readers the opportunity to consider the social construction of their own ethics even as they continue to read about Sade's violent destruction of conventional ethics. It is through understanding that the "thirst for pleasure" may in fact be an end in itself that we can then read Sade alongside other texts dealing with the monstrous, such as Anne Rice or Stephen King.

The context given for Justine provides the reader with an understanding of the different versions of the texts, beginning with the "philosophical tale" composed in 15 days while Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille in 1787, to a significantly expanded version of over 1,000 pages. Justine was on sale for over a year before the authorities began to seize copies, which led to the eventual arrest of the marquis (and his publisher). Phillips suggests that Sade may have subconsciously identified with his heroine, as he spent much of an unhappy decade writing different versions of her beleaguered virtue, which Phillips sees as a connection to Judith Butler's work on gender performativity that merits further investigation.

Throughout Justine, Phillips evaluates the use of Gothic and fairy-tale elements, the parallels to contemporary constructions of vampirism, and the complexity of female sexuality, leaving the reader with a useful and eye-opening way into a challenging set of texts. His detailed explanation of the differences between and reasons for the three versions of Justine (as well as an evaluation of the various editions of these versions) is a helpful guide.

While this book serves as an effective introduction for the scholar beginning work on Sade, it also offers Phillips's own contribution to Sadeian criticism in the historical/biographical context it provides as well as in the critical work on the "libertine's libertine." Phillips argues, based in part upon the context he provides for the libertine texts, that these were sexual fantasies to "substitute for the sexual realities of which imprisonment deprived" Sade. While it is difficult, and potentially problematic, to read such relationships between author and text, Phillips carefully builds a thorough argument in an attempt to bring some closure to these disturbing works.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

You would be surprised by how utterly boring Sade criticism can be.

Oh, well, maybe you wouldn't.

In any case, this had nothing interesting to say. Like a lot of critics attempting to reinstate Sade as a serious object of critical study, Philips tries, as much as possible, to skirt over the fact that Sade was a criminal not just because of the prudery of his time, but because he committed sexual assault. Also, he calls Saló a misreading, and that I simply cannot stand for.

Not very useful. Barthes or Carter are better. Though he at least validates the Candide-Justine connection I made some years ago. Good to get confirmation!