The Marquis de Sade's Encyclopedia of Excess

Main Article Content

Eliane Moraes

Abstract

From the publication of the Encyclopedia to the rise of the libertine lifestyle, eighteenth-century French sensibility underwent decisive transformations that, choosing excess as a common denominator, had a particular impact on ways of experiencing and representing the body. A privileged witness to these changes, the Marquis de Sade interpreted them in his own way, creating a unique work that responds to an effective attempt to produce excess. Within it, Les 120 journées de Sodome (1785) stands out as a true encyclopedia of the most extreme libertine fantasy.

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Author Biography

Eliane Moraes, Universidade de São Paulo (USP)

She is a professor of Brazilian Literature in the Department of Classical and Vernacular Languages at the Faculty of Letters, Philosophy, and Humanities (FFLCH) of the University of São Paulo (USP) and holds a CNPq Productivity 1B fellowship. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences, a master’s and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from USP, and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Paris Nanterre (FR—Fapesp Fellowship). She was a full professor at the School of Communication and Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) and a researcher in the 2021 Sabbatical Program at the IEA —the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP. She served as a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA—USA), the University of Paris Nanterre (PARIS 10—FR), the University of Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD—FR), the University of Nova in Lisbon (UNL—PT), and PUC-Rio. She has developed and coordinated projects in collaboration with the universities of Paris 10 (Nanterre), Paris 8 (Vincennes Saint-Denis), Paris 4 (Sorbonne Université), and Paris 3 (Sorbonne Nouvelle), and is an associate member of CREPAL—Centre de recherches sur les pays lusophones. He has conducted research and published works on the relationship between aesthetics and eroticism; on the Marquis de Sade and 18th-century European libertine literature; on Georges Bataille and French surrealism; on modernist eroticism in France and Brazil; and on Mário de Andrade, Dalton Trevisan, Roberto Piva, Hilda Hilst, and Reinaldo Moraes, among others. She edited the *Anthology of Brazilian Erotic Poetry* (published in 2015 in Brazil and in 2017 in Portugal), as well as two collections of Brazilian erotic short stories: *The Uncovered Body* (1852–1922) and *The Revealed Body* (1922–2022), published in 2018 and 2022, respectively, and compiled in the *Anthology of Brazilian Erotic Short Stories*, published in Portugal in 2024. She authored the organization and preface for *Seleta Erótica de Mário de Andrade* (2022) and served as co-editor for three international anthologies (France-Brazil). She has published seven books of essays, one of which was translated in Colombia (Lecciones de Sade, USC Editorial); her most recent work—*The Brazilian Damned Part: Literature, Excess, Eroticism*—was published in Portugal and Brazil in 2023. She currently advises doctoral students and supervises postdoctoral fellowships.

References

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MORAES, E. R. Perversos, amantes e outros trágicos. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2013.

PAUVERT, J.-J. Sade vivant. Tomo II. Paris: Robert Laffond, 1989.

PIA, P. (Org.) Dictionnaire des Œuvres Érotiques. Paris: Mercure de France, 1971.

SADE, Marquês de. Lettres à sa femme. Paris: Babel, 1997.

SADE, Marquês de. Os 120 dias de Sodoma ou A escola de libertinagem. Tradução de Rosa Freire D’Aguiar. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras / Penguin, 2018.

SCLIPPA, N.; PARKER, K. (Orgs.). Sade’s sensibilities. Maryland: Bucknell University Press, 2015.