ABSTRACT
I don’t know whether we must burn Sade; I do know that it is difficult to approach his work without getting burned: any literary analysis runs the risk of betraying Sadian écriture, of neutralizing what is meant to be violation, of bridging the gap where there is meant to be rupture. The difficulty, of course, lies in the coincidence of sex and text: inevitably turned on or off, analysts generally tend to treat the one at the expense of the other. 1 Aware of the danger, and without seeking to put out the fire, I would like to propose a reading of one of Sade’s novels, confronting simultaneously sexuality and textuality.
