This major collection of essays on the Marquis de Sade, first published in 1995, encompasses a wide range of critical approaches to his œuvre, 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.

'This excellent collection of essays merits closer consideration by advanced specialists. In addition to making classical texts on Sade published in French available to the English reader, the text offers an updated perspective on more recent scholarship.' French Review