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Marquis de Sade

It's fascinating to find that 'the Divine Marquis' has a thread to himself.

What has to be remembered when reading Sade is that some of what he wrote is intended as political satire (it's not a unique idea: in Weimar Germany, pornographic drawings were used to satirise the political situation, including the rise of Nazism). This is particularly true in the case of 120 Days, where the escalating horrors echo The Terror of the French Revolution at the time. Indeed, when the book was written, Sade was incarcerated in the Bastille. In other words, the rapes, the torture and the murders are meant to offend your senses and the pleasure of the four men at the centre of the story is a suggestion that the leaders of the Revolution effectively gained pleasure from their brutal decisions.

But it is also worth remembering that Sade was way ahead of his times in terms of his attitudes to women. He creates female libertines as well as male – in other words, he sees nothing wrong with women being in charge sexually and women gaining sexual pleasure.

It's perhaps difficult with Sade to appreciate just what an iconoclast he was – indeed, that his name still evokes such strong reactions shows that he remains exactly that.
 
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