French Literature Reviews - 2026

W. F. Edmiston, Sade: queer theorist
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

William F. Edmiston, Sade: queer theorist

Oxford : Voltaire Foundation, SVEC 2013

EAN 9780729410649

254 p.

Price: £60 / 80EUR / $105

In an era when both Church and State assigned gender roles and defined sexual practices in terms of male/female, lawful/illicit, Sade’s extensive accounts of sexual activity were categorized as deviant, prurient or provocative. William F. Edmiston explores how Sade’s unique challenge to sexual, moral and social taboos anticipates the discourses of queer theory.

Following an overview of queer theory, Edmiston examines the categories of sex, gender and sexuality as treated in some of Sade’s best- and lesser-known works. He demonstrates the extent to which Sade erodes the boundaries of sexual opposition through discourses justifying rather than illegitimizing ‘unlawful’ sex. Edmiston reveals the coexistence of two competing discourses on sexuality: a proclivity that cannot be eradicated, and a habit that one can choose to adopt. This pioneering re-reading culminates with an examination of how recent biographies attempt to force Sade into a normal/abnormal dichotomy, manipulating police reports, personal correspondence or narratorial interventions to establish (or not) the author’s homosexuality.

Through revealing Sade’s attempts to undermine prevailing gender roles and sexual identities, Edmiston uncovers a ‘queer’ discourse that challenges the still common assumption that heterosexuality is exclusively natural and normative, and that nature has always prompted humans to reproduce, rather than to seek pleasure.

Introduction

Sade, a queer theorist?

What is queer theory?

‘Sodomie’ and ‘antiphysique’ in the writings of Sade

Corpus and other details

1. Sade’s erotic novels: can we read them as queer?

Sex (anatomy): female/male

Gender (behavior): masculine/feminine

Sexuality: (object-choice of sexual pleasure) homosexual/heterosexual

2. Nature, sodomy, semantics and queer discourse

Nature

Sodomy: queer discourse

Semantics

Practice or proclivity?

3. Atrocities of a quite different kind: non-normative eroticism in Aline et Valcour

Incest in the frame narrative

Homosexuality and incest in the embedded narratives

4. Queering the Marquis

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

For further information on this book:

http://xserve.volt.ox.ac.uk/VFcatalogue/details.php?recid=6544

To order this book or other Voltaire Foundation publications: http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/orders/orders.ssi

Queer theory emerged in the late twentieth century as a critical framework questioning fixed categories of sex, gender, and sexual orientation, often drawing on post-structuralist critiques of identity. In this study, William F. Edmiston examines categories of sex, gender, and sexuality across a selection of Sade's best- and lesser-known writings. The volume follows an overview of queer theory and investigates how Sade's texts erode boundaries of sexual opposition through discourses that justify unlawful sex. Readers interested in eighteenth-century literature, sexuality studies, and the reception of the Marquis de Sade may find this work relevant.