William S. Allen is an independent researcher and a librarian at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Ellipsis: Of Poetry and the Experience of Language after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot (2007) and Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (2016).

Combining philosophical and literary methods, Allen reads Sade’s pornographic works in historicist fashion, analysing them in tandem with materialist philosophy and sentimental fiction (notably with Denis Diderot) … Allen has written an important book. He demonstrates how Sade equated language and the body to advance his libertine philosophy and shows the subversive intersections between sentimentalism and materialism in eighteenth-century thought. Complex and sometimes dense, the analysis contributes substantially to how we understand the meaning and intentions behind Sade’s language and approach.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Realism, Imagination, and Desire1. Turmoil: Adorno's Literal Reading2. Intoxication: The Nature of Influence3. Hors-la-loi: Blanchot and the Revolution4. Disorientation: The Conditions of Abstraction5. Praxis: Crime and History6. Resistance: Forms Without EndNotesFurther ReadingIndex

William S. Allen is an independent researcher and a librarian at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Ellipsis: Of Poetry and the Experience of Language after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot (2007) and Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (2016).

Combining philosophical and literary methods, Allen reads Sade’s pornographic works in historicist fashion, analysing them in tandem with materialist philosophy and sentimental fiction (notably with Denis Diderot) … Allen has written an important book. He demonstrates how Sade equated language and the body to advance his libertine philosophy and shows the subversive intersections between sentimentalism and materialism in eighteenth-century thought. Complex and sometimes dense, the analysis contributes substantially to how we understand the meaning and intentions behind Sade’s language and approach.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Realism, Imagination, and Desire1. Turmoil: Adorno's Literal Reading2. Intoxication: The Nature of Influence3. Hors-la-loi: Blanchot and the Revolution4. Disorientation: The Conditions of Abstraction5. Praxis: Crime and History6. Resistance: Forms Without EndNotesFurther ReadingIndex

William S. Allen is an independent researcher and a librarian at the University of Southampton, UK. He is the author of Ellipsis: Of Poetry and the Experience of Language after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot (2007) and Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (2016).

Combining philosophical and literary methods, Allen reads Sade’s pornographic works in historicist fashion, analysing them in tandem with materialist philosophy and sentimental fiction (notably with Denis Diderot) … Allen has written an important book. He demonstrates how Sade equated language and the body to advance his libertine philosophy and shows the subversive intersections between sentimentalism and materialism in eighteenth-century thought. Complex and sometimes dense, the analysis contributes substantially to how we understand the meaning and intentions behind Sade’s language and approach.

• AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Realism, Imagination, and Desire1. Turmoil: Adorno's Literal Reading2. Intoxication: The Nature of Influence3. Hors-la-loi: Blanchot and the Revolution4. Disorientation: The Conditions of Abstraction5. Praxis: Crime and History6. Resistance: Forms Without EndNotesFurther ReadingIndex