Perspective

The perspective underpinning the works of the Marquis de Sade in general - and the Bedroom Philosophers in particular - is problematic for the modern reader. His work invariably deal in sexual perversions, some innocuous, most criminally vile. His words are lilting and playful, but his characters seem to act without any sense of irony; there is no wink behind these hideous actions.

Sade was an aristocrat. His tastes were always patrician, but he found himself a prominent citizen of the Republic. This is in part because of his public praise for such Revolutionary figures as Jean-Paul Marat and in part because of well-publicized persecution he suffered under Louis XV, including his imprisonment in the Bastille on sodomy charges. Sade detested the false piety of the pre-Revolutionary aristocracy, but he also detested to Christian radicalism of Robespierre and the blind militarism of Dumouriez. In short, the Marquis de...