Sade Before the Law

Unlike the numerous readings of Sade that make him the apologist of evil, the theorist of crime, and the advocate of the most radical libertinism, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer argues vigorously that we must not confuse Sade with his libertine characters, that the smoky legend of the divine marquis is precisely a legend, which has inflated facts that are very limited, and that he is above all a prisoner who has suffered the arbitrariness of a pseudo-justice. Vilmer undertakes to demonstrate that we must choose between the Sade of correspondence, who complains during more than 28 years of incarceration that he is an (almost) virtuous victim of immoral persecutors, and the Sade of libertine novels, who vaunts immorality and praises torturers.