Morris is an American literary critic who has also published studies on eighteenth-century English poetry. In the following excerpt, he explores Sade's use and transformation of contemporary ideas about pain and the social and political implications of this aspect of Sade's work

In the following excerpt, Hayes examines the role of conflicting ideologies in Sade's plays and novels, concentrating in particular on his disruption of structure and meaning.

In this excerpt, Ferguson discusses Philosophy in the Bedroom as an "antimetaphysical" and "anticultural" political dialogue and relates elements of the text to French policy regarding the national debt.

In his book Dangerous Truths & Criminal Passions, DiPiero argues that the novel arose as a medium of resistance to accepted literary genres and to the ideological assumptions they served to legitimize. In the following excerpt, he suggests that Sade's narrative strategies in Justine expose the constructed nature of discourse and ideology.

Fink published numerous articles on Sade during the 1970s. In the following excerpt, she examines the political content of Sade's work and argues that he should be taken seriously as a political thinker."

A radical feminist essayist and fiction writer, Dworkin has published several books on the politics of gender. In her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, she argues that pornography functions in society as an instrument of power with which men degrade and subjugate women. In the following excerpt from that book, Dworkin posits that the violence against women that permeates Sade's work expresses basic assumptions about the relative rights of men and women in both his society and the present day. ...

In the following excerpt, Williams analyzes the heroines in Sade's short stories and in his novel Aline et Valcour.

An English fiction writer and critic whose novels and short stories combined lush prose, eroticism, and elements of the macabre, Carter explored gender issues in both her fiction and her non-fiction. In the following excerpt, she argues that Sadean pornography is indirectly useful to women because it lays bare the oppressive politics of conventional male-female relationships.

In the following excerpt, Lee evaluates Sade's technique in his "iconoclastic" novels in terms of its function and apparent purpose.

In this excerpt, Carpenter examines Sade's violations of the Classical principle of closure, particularly in Philosophy in the Bedroom, as a threat to "the notion of ideology as such. "

Lynch has published several books and articles on eighteenth-century French literature. In this excerpt, he reviews the influence of Sade's writings and his critical reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In the following excerpt, O'Reilly examines contradictions in Sade's concept of the self as reflected in his rhetorical practices.

A French novelist, philosopher, and critic who died in 1962, Bataille received considerable critical attention in France for his theories of eroticism and mysticism. He was among the first critics to undertake a serious study of Sade's writing and philosophy. In this excerpt from a book first published in French in 1957, Bataille considers the sexual excesses depicted in Sade's works in terms of a quest for absolute personal sovereignty.

The author of numerous books on French literature, ethics, philosophy, and women's rights, Michael has published several books and articles on the Marquis de Sade. In this excerpt, she suggests that Sade uses irony and comic effects to distance the reader from his text.

Juliette closes the Classical age upon itself, just as Don Quixote had opened it. And though it is true that this is the last language still contemporaneous with Rousseau and Racine, though it is the last discourse that undertakes to 'represent', to name, we are well enough aware that it simultaneously reduces this ceremony to the utmost precision (it calls things by their strict name, thus eliminating the space occupied by rhetoric) and extends it to infinity (by naming everything, including...