The Crimes of Love

Overview

Who but the Marquis de Sade would write not of the pain, tragedy, and joy of love but of its crimes? Murder, seduction, and incest are among the cruel rewards for selfless love in his stories--tragedy, despair, and death the inevitable outcome. Sade's villains will stop at nothing to satisfy their depraved passions, and they in turn suffer under the thrall of love.
This is the most complete selection from the Marquis de Sade's four-volume collection of short stories, The Crimes of Love . David Coward's vibrant new translation captures the verve of the original, and his introduction and notes describe Sade's notorious career. This new selection includes "An Essay on Novels," Sade's penetrating survey of the novelist's art. It also contains the preface to the collection and an important statement of Sade's concept of fiction and one of the few literary manifestoes published during the Revolution. Appendices include the denunciatory review of the collection that it received on publication, and Diderot's vigorous response. A skilled and artful story-teller, Marquis de Sade's is also an intellectual who asks questions about society, about ourselves, and about life. Psychologically astute and defiantly unconventional, these stories show Sade at his best.

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Author Information

Bio of Marquis de Sade

Marquis De Sade, 1740 - 1814 The Marquis De Sade was born in Paris in 1740. He fought in the French Army during the Seven Years War before being tried and sentenced to death in 1772 for a series of sexual crimes. He escaped to Italy but upon his return to France in 1777, he was recaptured and thrown into the prison at Vincennes. De Sade spent six years at Vincennes before being transferred first to the Bastille and then to Charenton lunatic asylum in 1789. He was released from the asylum in 1790 but was arrested again in 1801. De Sade was moved from prison to prison before returning to Charenton in 1803, where he later died. Many of the Marquis De Sade's works feature descriptions of sexual acts and crimes. It is from these terrible descriptions of the Marquis' that the word Sadism is created. Sadism is the term for a neurosis where sexual satisfaction is gained by the infliction of pain on others. The term is a play on the Marquis De Sade's name. According to the Marquis' philosophy, the sexual and criminal acts that he depicts in his works are normal. His works have therefore been labeled obscene and banned into the 20th Century. 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

Oxford University Press, Incorporated

Filesize

658.35 KB

Number of Pages

388

eBook ISBN

9780191517099