Sade As a Didact - Narrative Strategies

This study discusses selected aspects of a few non-obscene works of de Sade in order to understand why and how does narrative take the shape or masquerade as folk tales or eye-witness accounts in Aline et Valcour (1795) and a few stories from the anthologies Historiettes, contes et fabliaux [ 'Dorci', 'L'époux corrigé', 'La chastelaine de Longeville', 'Le président mystifié' ](1788) and Les crimes de l'amour ['Florville et Courval'] (1800). Motific suggestions ( for example the deliverance of the virgin; the initiatory journey in the realm of the physical, the mystical and the allegorical ) and their immemorial utopian genesis are also examined, for they recur in 'proper' political science and are routinely exploited and perverted to the advantage of Sade's peculiar world view: helpless mankind inhabits a hectic universe at the mercy of an unconcerned 'invisible hand' (in turn identified with nature, fate or providence ) whose only ethic is highly situational.