Sade's Sensibilities tells a new story of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in European literature. Blending ideas about subjectivity, identity and natural philosophy with politics and pornography, D.A.F. de Sade has fascinated writers and readers for two hundred years, and his materialist account of the human condition has been widely influential in post-structuralism, nihilism, and feminism. This new collection of essays considers Sade's Enlightenment legacy, both within and beyond the narratives of radicalism and aberration that have historically marked the study of his oeuvre. From different points of view, these essays argue that Sade engaged with and influenced traditional Enlightenment paradigms-particularly those related to sensibility, subjectivity, and philosophy-as much as he resisted them. They thus recover a Sade more relevant, even foundational to our twenty-first century understanding of modernity, selfhood, and community. In Sade's Sensibilities Sade is no longer a solitary, peripheral radical, but an Enlightenment philosopher in his own right.

Sade's Sensibilities tells a new story of one of the most enduring and controversial figures in European literature. Blending ideas about subjectivity, identity and natural philosophy with politics and pornography, D.A.F. de Sade has fascinated writers and readers for two hundred years, and his materialist account of the human condition has been widely influential in post-structuralism, nihilism, and feminism. This new collection of essays considers Sade's Enlightenment legacy, both within and beyond the narratives of radicalism and aberration that have historically marked the study of his oeuvre. From different points of view, these essays argue that Sade engaged with and influenced traditional Enlightenment paradigms-particularly those related to sensibility, subjectivity, and philosophy-as much as he resisted them. They thus recover a Sade more relevant, even foundational to our twenty-first century understanding of modernity, selfhood, and community. In Sade's Sensibilities Sade is no longer a solitary, peripheral radical, but an Enlightenment philosopher in his own right.

Le roman erotique et libertin du XVIIIe siecle serait un texte polemique qui se dresse contre la morale sexuelle et religieuse regnante. Il illustrerait un mode de vie, des techniques d'apprentissage du sexe ou des controverses sur les rapports entre la sensation et l'intellection. De leur cote, les discours religieux ou scientifiques sur le corps erotique se constitueraient en opposition a la representation romanesque du corps domine par le desir. Mladen Kozul remet en question cette opposition reductrice. Dans cette etude interdisciplinaire, centree sur la representation du corps erotique, l'auteur reinscrit le roman libertin dans son temps et dans les rapports de force qui le traversent. A travers les textes des romanciers et des defenseurs du classicisme, des ecclesiastiques et des medecins, il avance l'hypothese que l'age classique critique le roman erotique non pas tant parce qu'il s'oppose aux discours religieux ou medicaux, que parce qu'il exhibe le sous-bassement libidinal de ces memes discours regulateurs. Dans Le Corps erotique au XVIIIe siecle Mladen Kozul propose une lecture tout a fait nouvelle de l'imaginaire erotique qui se constitue au travers des textes et des discours disparates. Retournant la condamnation qui le vise contre les discours qui l'attaquent, le roman libertin est l'embleme de toute une culture pour laquelle le libertinage est la verite cachee des discours de l'orthodoxie morale et ideologique de son temps.