570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 SERGIO ZENERE
MAY 2008
ESSAY
ISBN:978-1-312-78095-8
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2
Sade's Utopian Digression of Butua: An Exploration
This essay tries to analyze and to put in perspective one self-contained, dystopian digression contained in Aline et Valcour (1795), de Sade's long, romanesque epistolary novel, namely the episode ( from the “letter XXXV� in the novel ) describing the exotic, imaginary African kingdom of Butua. While the topic requires at times to venture into the realm of utopian studies, or general Sadean studies, it must be emphasized that an exhaustive or allencompassing analysis of the above is well beyond the scope of this paper, whose limited purpose is only a better comprehension of Sade's use of utopia to disperse a philosophical/political message, in a fashion that seems to me perfectly attuned to Enlightenment and XVIII century in general.
The big picture
The first question to ask is how original Sade might be choosing utopia to disperse his philosophical message, or how tentative/innovative his choice of exotic African landscapes might prove. The answer to both questions can be summarily negative: there is nothing even remotely original or innovative in the literary tools or general framework Sade makes ample recourse to; I would rather give Sade credit for his ability to engineer a hodgepodge that stands out in a sea of commonplaceness with its virulence and far-fetched suggestions (Perrier 2007:145-146; Gallouet 2005:68 ) that are actual topic of discussion in the tabloids of this day. 2
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 Starting with Thomas More, Machiavelli, Harrington and others, modern European political thought appropriates – through medieval chivalric novels - the variety that late antiquity novels offered, namely a composite, diverse and at times barely fitting together lump of literary devices and related figures of speech detailing hectic peregrinations, 'magic' adventures or discoveries, superhuman actors and so forth; actors thus bear striking resemblance to their founding fathers in ancient or chivalric novels. Over the centuries literary sophistication makes sorcery, dragons, leprechauns and mandrake less and less needed ingredients, yet their literary function does not disappear: it is taken over by what is 'all the rage' at the moment, namely political events, burgeoning pornography, anthropology, biology, social and natural sciences alike. The XVIII century public might not be interested in dragons and ogres lusting after princesses, but it is undoubtedly interested in debates about 'missing links' (E.G between men and animals; or between classes of natural phenomena, E.G between minerals and plants ), while prurient pornography involving 'otherness' starts to gain momentum ( Sauvage 2006:97-98 ) in the footsteps of a ripe, millenarian tradition: from fantasies about minotaurs, satyrs, centaurs, mermen and so forth to pornography promoted via unsolicited e-mail these days.
The very idea of novels detailing travels/peregrinations/adventures as precursory to
Bildungsroman is as old as man. Traveling to exotic, far away places absorbs all sorts of overt or symbolic meanings and follows in the steps of a trail the pre-Socratics ( E.G Parmenides, V-IV
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 century B.C ) had once blazed, with illustrious followers in the Church theologians and later in chivalric literature and eminent poets such as Dante and others. The main actor(s) typically undergo a series of trials and must face obstacles of all sorts in the realm of the physical, the mystical and the allegorical and -like Parmenides- reach in the end (or are granted/awarded ) an infinitely deeper level of knowledge and are oftentimes allowed to return home with divine spoils, whether it be the gold of Eldorado, the Grail, the word of a deity or the pseudoanthropological account of the overwhelming 'otherness' of some bizarre population living an even more eccentric lifestyle (Braga 2002, no page) in some faraway land. Political science as well is not foreign to the above; after all, Machiavelli's Il Principe (1513) is a capstone of western political philosophy and Harrington's utopia Seven Models (1658) was taken into account while drafting the constitution of Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to name just a couple examples. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, the
mythical, imaginary
Christian kingdom of “prester John� was sought in the hope that an alliance would avert impending Muslim invasion and takeover dreaded for centuries; such kingdom was purely fictional, yet detailed maps of the same circulated everywhere, and some even claimed to have visited it; Perrier (2007:142 ) shares the opinion of eminent critics and describes Sade's opus as mere fruit of his imagination: Sade's digression fits perfectly within all this.
The novel
Sade's Aline et Valcour (1795) constitutes a deep, intricate and diverse mixture of XVIII 4
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 century and utopian commonplace topoi (Lanni 2004; Perrier 2007:164 ). Aline is the young, virtuous daughter of hardened libertine magistrate Monsieur de Blamont, noble de robe issued from the bourgeoisie; she falls in love with Monsieur de Valcour, noble d'épée of illustrious birth but financially bankrupt. M. de Blamont conspires with his accomplice and disciple Dolbourg (an aging but wealthy libertine financier ) to wed Aline to Dolbourg as a part of a plan including incest and murder. The main narrative in the novel ends in a decimation of Gothic undertone reminiscent of romantic Bildungsroman: Aline commits suicide; virtuous Madame de Blamont is poisoned by her husband for trying to foil his plans; shocked Dolbourg reforms and retreats in solitude; Valcour joins the clergy to die soon of heartbreak; M. de Blamont expatriates when his crimes are made public, only to be waylaid and murdered abroad. Tirelli-Rocca (1980:66), Fink (1980) and others borrow an argument from Goulemot ( Colloque
d'Aix 1968 ) and see in the inanity and submissiveness of Aline and Valcour the demonstration of a clash between disused values and lifestyles and new, bourgeois, acquisitive and “modern” values (Goulemot in Colloque d'Aix 1968:131 ).
The entire novel is a medium for Sade to show his control of style and 'good writing', his proficiency test to join the hommes de lettre of his times: “but Aline et Valcour -...- [which] has been almost completely neglected by people writing about de Sade, appeared to me so full of pregnant ideas” ( Gorer, 1934, no page ); “ Aline et Valcour n'est pas un roman philosophique quelconque mais le roman philosophique par excellence “ (Lanni 2004, no page ). Within the
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 novel a huge digression is narrated, spanning several hundreds pages, which details the adventures and peregrinations of Léonore and Sainville, two young -yet self-assertive- runaway aristocrats who braved their families to get married while shunning arranged marriages; libertines abduct pubescent Léonore in Venice and so their peregrinations and adventures begin. In this mixture lies the essence of what Sade thinks best epitomizes the 'good' novel and “the most essential form of knowledge” (Sade 1800, no page): knowing what mankind is all about through a cathartic mixture of learning through traveling and misadventure.
Why Africa?
In the XVIII century many exotic landscapes might have supplied a suitable location for a dystopian escapade: America, Asia, the southern seas...expanding European colonialism was reaching diverse and faraway shores. Critics are divided: while some (Mercier 1969:340 ) argue that America had entered the European sphere of policy making already, and was therefore unfit to represent 'state of nature', others (Perol 2002:233; Dolan 1986:309 ) suggest that Sade simply picked an obscure location so that his pseudo-scientific descriptions stood little chance of being challenged by eye witnesses. An interesting suggestion is that Africa might have represented a new, still uncharted Eldorado (Corlan-Ioan 2006, no page; Miller 1983:80 ), opposed to America's Eldorado that was already being exploited.
My opinion is that Africa was indeed 'in the air'; as a matter of fact Sade's digression pays
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 tribute to many 'in the air' topics. I define 'in the air' as 'mood of the times' with the following examples: around the mid-1980s everybody was talking about the “cold fusion” scientific breakthrough, later exposed as a mixture of hoax and fraud; up until the 1980s the public was fed East-German spies, KGB infiltrators, Soviet testing of nuclear weapons on the dark side of the Moon and impending 'nuclear holocaust'. Not casually, these fads are instrumental to fostering intricate world views and deeply rooted psychological categories revolving around generic -yet powerful- concepts such as 'progress', 'right and wrong', 'moral and immoral' and so forth: Africa and Africans served such a purpose in the XVIII century and beyond. Although some ( Gallouet 2005:71) think that no real shift from the romanesque discourse takes place, or that (Mercier 1969:341) Sade is just following a cliché, 'otherness' had a pivotal role to play ( Corlan-Ioan 2006; Sauvage 2006:98 ): Africa and Africans were the best ingredients for an unbridled, uncanny, unholy dystopian extravaganza; a death dance with the hypnotic pretentiousness of a voodoo ritual that would bring to life macabre, ominous fears from the realm of the twilight of reason, irrespective of any 'prophetic' value (Gallouet 2005:68) anticipating XIX century 'colonial mentality': “tout un imaginaire du cannibalisme Africain “ ( Sauvage 2006:103 ). It is important to remark that Sainville's other utopian adventure takes place after he quits Africa and visits a mysterious island in the southern seas in pursuit of Cook. It is not a mystery that the 'negative' African utopia is located in a very precise -albeit not necessarily exact- geographical area, while the 'positive' utopia's location is much more obscure, as if Sade meant that absolute evil is of this world, while absolute goodness shall exist only in a 7
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 fantasy: Africa was the perfect “Enfer terrestre” [hell on Earth] (Corlan-Ioan 2006, no page). Critics disagree about the accuracy of Sade's geography or anthropology: Mercier praises Sade's “ care for documentation and an attentiveness to exactitude” (1969:342-343) with minor reservations; Gallouet (2005:70) refers to Sade's Africa as “imaginary” and Beach (1980:61 ) claims that Sade “tells us nothing about Eighteenth-century Africa “, while elsewhere Mercier refers to Sade's depictions as “[merely] conventional” (Mercier 1969:351 ).
It must also be emphasized how utopia in general tends to follow certain prescriptions. For example, the writer's mind is the only truly free thinking agent; readers are typically passive recipients of the writer's gospel. Obsession with details, numbers, geometry and related paraphernalia accompany utopia as her dowry to 'document' how the writer has either 'personally' visited the land, or learnt about it from irreproachable sources ranging from dying captives to long lost manuscripts to travel diaries bought in a book shop:” The desire for Prester John is the desire for an Other who is a perfect reflection or fulfillment of yourself“ (Miller 1983:79 ). Whether fruit of mere fantasy, phantasy, deeper psychological disturbances or the deeply ingrained quest for otherness and the supernatural, even 'serious' travel diaries detailing State-sponsored explorations mingle known kingdoms with imaginary ones (E.G Prester John's ) when learned scribes claim to have 'personally visited' all of them (Miller 1983:81-82 ).
Butua
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 During his journey Sainville is stranded on the coast of Africa: “ between Benguele and the Jagas kingdom, in the Cap Nègre region “ (Sade 1795, no page). Readers are immediately served a commonplace topos when a distressed Sainville -who has been carrying a financial fortune with him in the form of banknotes – laments -in the footsteps of biblical stories- how he'd rather have food than worthless banknotes; polemic discourse germane to Rousseau's delight in the primeval state of nature when bons sauvages prospered, haunted by few -and far between- needs is here at play. Next, from a treetop Sainville gets first acquainted with otherness witnessing a cannibal feast and related ceremony during which Jagas warriors torture, murder and cannibalize prisoners of war. The symbolic value of the treetop opposed to the grisly ceremony is obvious; as well, some scholars can read deep between the lines about stereotypes and prejudices (Sauvage 2006; Gallouet 2005 ) when the sight of still distant Africans suggests to Sainville to approach them to seek help, only to immediately recoil in horror from the thought, because Africans and cannibalism go hand in hand, even before a meeting .
Sainville is then captured by Butuas and brought to their capital city. Here Sade takes the opportunity to walk in the footsteps of Thucydides, who held that reconstructed events must 'resemble what really happened'. Sainville's story is -in the novel- narrated in a letter as supposedly heard in person from Sainville himself, therefore Sainville's audience (the virtuous people around Madame de Blamont and Aline ) is forewarned of the forthcoming grisly nature
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 of the African digression. Le comte, Madame de Blamont's friend and -just like her- virtuous aristocrat of illustrious lineage (unlike M. de Blamont), insists for realistic, unedited details, “ If you want to learn something from this real life story, events must be told exactly as they happened “ (Sade 1795, no page), thus uttering Sade's statement about what the purpose of a good novel shall be, a medium to reach a form of catharsis, much like ancient Greeks believed. Some critics doubt the value of such 'realism', however, and suggest the Africa presented there is a pre-digested byproduct of eurocentric mentality (Gallouet 2005:73-74 ).
Greeted by the sight of grisly human sacrifices, Sainville then meets King Ben Maacoro and his “prime minister” (Fink in L'Esprit Créateur 1975:405), “consultant and translator” (Schorderet 2004:164 ), “ministre” (Gallouet 2005:73 ), “aide” (1983:308 ), a 66 years old Portuguese captive whom Beach (1980:60) correctly identifies as “the king's favourite”, “Le Portugais -...- connu pour le favori du Prince” (Sade 1795, no page ). After a narrow escape ( he is deemed too old for the King's pleasures and too thin to be eaten ), Sainville is appointed 'inspector' on the King's service -as Sarmiento suggests- to examine female captives in order to choose those destined to the King's pleasures and human sacrifices, thanks to his 'superior' French taste. Exchange of philosophical harangues and related utopian gospel between Sainville and Sarmiento begins immediately “en bon Toscan” [in good Italian] (Sade 1795, no page ), yet name and age alone (Sarmiento, 66 years old ) are enough to prompt complex considerations about biblical imagery in the novel, turning Sarmiento into “sarmento”, biblical allegory for the
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 damned destined to hell and 66, the number of the “beast” (Schorderet 2004:174,175).
Sarmiento
proceeds to recount how 12.000 females -aged from childhood to their
twenties- serve as the King's private harem, divided in teams performing various chores and duties, from guarding the King to his immediate pleasures and so forth; order, geometry and abundance, capstone of utopian writing, are represented by a huge, yet hierarchical, cohort of women. It is soon evident (and the topic will return many times over ) that women in Butua sit at the bottom of the social ladder as perpetual victims of all sorts of abuses (Favre 1967:21). Unlike their European 'sisters', women in Butua are mere chattel and beasts of burden; what is more, pregnancy and childbirth are not the celebrated capstone of anything, but disfiguring and unholy events that expose women to public ostracism (E.G churches are off-limits ) and very often to violent retaliation in typical Sadean style, leading to miscarriages and often to death; la
donna angelicata, whom Renaissance poets glorified in the footsteps of chivalric traditions, morphs into the basest creature. Children follow closely, mere victims of the sexual appetites and cruelty of the clergy in charge of their 'state-sponsored education' ( a perversion of the Spartan ideal ), of their fathers, not to mention the King and his vassals.
While it appears that Sarmiento supports 'the law of the land', Sainville's apparent disgust prompts the following remark: “ My friend, you still love in the fashion of the tenth century“ (Sade 1795, no page ). This allusion is not casual, for Sade -in his theorization of what a good novel ought to be like- first praises his times for the daring ( “ à l'example des Titans “ Sade 11
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 1800, no page ) advancements made in the realm of philosophy and self-awareness, then concludes with the rhetoric question: “l'homme du dix-huitième siècle, en un mot, est-il donc celui du onzième” (Sade 1800, no page ). It is important here to mind what is Sade's way of understanding human existence in the broader context of the universe: much like in the imaginary kingdom of Butua, human life is intended as worthless appendage and consequence of primordial appetites (E.G sexual urges, whence procreation ) at the mercy of hectic natural forces under the merciless gaze of unconcerned heavens, in a universe whose only ethics is highly situational. To borrow Sade's own example, nature akin to a volcano either erupts precious stones to delight people, or fireballs to annihilate them; Butua is therefore “hell on Earth” where cannibalism, human sacrifices, infanticide, sodomy, tyranny, torture, incest, pedophilia, murder and so forth acquire the strength of publicly sanctioned
institutions
( Tumminelli 1998:92 ).
Butua, the kingdom where délicatesse does not reign
Butua is as big as Portugal (important allusion that Sade drops nonchalantly) and borders the kingdom of Monoe-Mungi, Lutapa mountains and mostly the land of Jagas (Sade 1795, no page). When a match for Butua is to be located, among the many, diverse and long-lived political systems of Sade's times, he explicitly chooses Poland:“ Only the old State structure of
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 Poland can give an idea of this one “(Sade 1795, no page ); critics ignore this choice, but my opinion is that it is a massive tribute to 'the mood of the times'. In fact the chaotic state of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was topic of heated debates, akin to the crisis of former USSR or Yugoslavia in our recent times; Rousseau and Bonnot de Mably had earlier been summoned to help with the vain attempt to reform the imploding kingdom, and the first partition had occurred only in 1772 (two more to come in 1793 and 1795 ), to be (partially) reversed only in 1918 with the collapse of the German Empire after WWI. Much like Poland, Butua is an elective kingdom divided in provinces under semi-independent, local rulers who pay nominal allegiance and tributes to a King whose clutch is typically transient. Much like Poland's customary liberum veto [free men's veto ] had brought that Commonwealth to its knees, Butua's restless honchos are not contributing to the country's well being. Given the highly situational ethics and brutal lifestyle, it is not strange that Sarmiento foretells the kingdom's demise through depopulation, nearly non-existent commerce and decadence of a brute, oblivious, illiterate, abject rabble ( Favre 1967:12). Meanwhile the King and his vassals -in alliance with a powerful clergy- subjugate and conquer a faceless multitude of miserable drudges in a literally never ending orgy of moral relativism, expeditionary massacres, human sacrifices, cannibalism, pedophilia, sodomy, rampant abortion, infanticide and consequent torpid oblivion, while fathers act towards their families much like the King towards his subjects. Since Portugal is succumbing as well under the devastating influence of its clergy and under English protectorate, Butua is a perfect synecdoche ( Schorderet 2004: 164 ). The lack of 13
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2
délicatesse miffs Sarmiento, yet the name ought not to fool the reader, for a scholar gives this appropriate definition of délicatesse: “ Eating shit on Tiffany silverware would perhaps be its most concise expression: nearly a demonstration.“ (Weidmann, no page, no date ).
Butua, the science
At one point Sarmiento tries to explain the reasons for Butua's proprietary lifestyle: “c'est à l'extrême chaleur de ce climat qu'il faut attribuer, sans doute, la corruption morale de ces peuples “ and “ Il faut être né comme moi, dans un climat chaud, reprit le Portugais, pour s'accoutumer aux brûlantes ardeurs de ce ciel-ci “ (Sade 1795, no page ) and invokes a long-lived theory in which the climate (hence nature) represents the pivotal force literally bending individuals to its own laws: “cesse de faire ici le difficile, et saches te plier aux situations “ suggests Sarmiento to Sainville, or when in Rome do as the Romans do. Modern readers might find the explanation uncanny, and scholars (Gallouet 2005:74; Miller 1983:25 ) have criticized the value and depth of knowledge and understanding of Africa, if any at all, yet I feel compelled to add that scientific researches bringing climate into question as explanation for human characteristics or behaviour abound, even if unencumbered by the suggestive baggage of metaphors and allegories of the past. Corpuscular theories are also present in the form of doctrines that ascribe behaviour to stimuli and dynamics related to nerves, bodily fluids and so forth, in perfect XVIII century style. When Sainville gallantly saves a woman from her husband's wrath, Sarmiento calmly observes that there is no difference between his debauchery 14
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 and Sainville's gallantry, for both just sought (and found) pleasure in courses of action likely to cause it. Furthermore- argues Sarmiento putting forward another of Sade's maxims- Sainville just deprived the husband of both his property and of the well-being coming to him from harassing his wife. Murderous libertines are therefore not moral abomination but victims of the dynamics of their bodily fluids, nerves, and of societal oppression enforcing an arbitrary divide between legality and illegality, and so forth.
Butua, the philosophical speeches
Scholars are divided about what might be the main philosophical message/lesson that Sade wants to impart; the limited consensus seems to revolve around the presence of a philosophical/political message. Some (Schorderet 2004:169) correctly observe that Sainville and Sarmiento, who at first glance might seem to represent antipodal viewpoints ( Sarmiento is clearly a man of his times and makes fun of Sainville's attitude as belonging to the X century ), in reality seem to take turns uttering parts from the same coherent discourse, that is Sade's 'political agenda'. While Sainville should play the part of the virtuous gallant man as opposed to libertine Sarmiento and his situational ethics, he vehemently wishes that Portugal (and Butua represents Portugal and Poland in synecdoche ) would violently raise against both the bloodthirsty clergy and the English protectorate; the clergy in Butua is another figure of speech to denounce what later would be called the trinity of the King, the Pope and the hangman as capstone of Ancien RĂŠgime, with its own economy. Sainville as well pleads in favor of two of 15
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 Sade's philosophical cornerstones: decrease in population, isolationism and autarky, hence some (Manfredi 1986:4-5) consider Sade as prophetic precursor of Malthus and -in general- of Freudian theories of sexuality. While Sainville mostly keeps to protestations against cruelty and to political science, Sarmiento keeps a more straight line of thought expounding the virtues of tyranny and of situational ethics, with or without recourse to the science of climate and so forth; perhaps he's a philosopher of despotism, or perhaps – as Goulemot ( Colloque d'Aix
1966:127 ) suggests - he might be advocating tyranny in the petty, self-serving hope of one day holding such power for himself; in fact -in the novel- Sarmiento falls victim of the aborted
golpe he sought to orchestrate.
Scholars disagree about the overall meaning as well; Favre (1967) sees in Butua an allegory of the conflict between individuals and the State; Gorer (1934, no page ) understands Butua in terms of allegoric clash between“ two antagonistic classes the haves and the have-nots. This point is so fundamental for de Sade“; Miller (1983:313 ) argues that “ Idolatry and cannibalism are one and the same system “, or that (1983:316-317) “when practiced on a statue by Butuans, it is Africanist idolatry; when practiced on women by Europeans, it is libertinage. “; for Gallouet (2005:72 ) cannibalism and otherness go hand in hand and monkey's meat served for dinner (as an alternative to cannibalism ) is linked to symbolic ( or impending ) cannibalism (2005:76); for Fink (L'Esprit Créateur 1975:408, 412 ) “Cannibalism has turned
Eros in
Thanatos, into the life-by-death principle of the Meal.”, “ cannibalism becomes metonymic”;
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570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2 Schorderet (2004:167 ) borrows the concept of “unproductive [or frivulous] spending” from Bataille and applies it to cannibalism and garrison/war state; Tumminelli (1998:92) suggests that Butua epitomizes domination schemes and so forth.
It is impossible to examine here the various undertones and hues in Sade's thought. Various scholars have in turn identified different concepts talked about in the digression as spanning endless reflexions about the allegorical or philosophical value of the same: gold, cannibalism, Butua's government, African people, women's role and plight, Portugal, Ancien Régime and so forth. As well, Sade's work has been interpreted either as prophetic anticipation of later mainstream theories, or as befuddled hodgepodge engineered through a large recourse to 'literary indebtedness'. In spite of Sade's vehement critique of plagiarism, most critics ( Goulemot 2000; Reuland 2003:32; Sauvage 2006:97; Dolan 1986: 303,310; Terasse 1989 ) agree that plagiarism was part of Sade's modus operandi. Some even mention “falsification of historical facts” ( Schorderet 2004:164,171 ) and suggest that Sade evokes a real-life XVI century Spanish Sarmiento active in South America and makes a XVIII century imaginary Portuguese of him, although others (Lanni 2004, no page ) argue that sources are given proper credit, at least in this digression.
In this essay I have tried to reach a better understanding of Sade's self-contained digression describing the imaginary African kingdom of Butua. It is my opinion that Sade resorts heavily to long-established topoi and literary devices in the utopian and later 17
570037554 SERGIO ZENERE MAY 2008 LLM2021 Independent Study Module Level 2
romanesque tradition, which might be tracked back to the pre-Socratics and -more precisely- to ancient novels, not to mention chansons des gestes and later medieval chivalric texts dealing with heroes larger than life, hectic peregrinations, 'magic' adventures and so forth. Sade takes this further and pays homage to many philosophical, literary or political topics, which happened to be 'all the rage' in his times: the necessity of sparking catharsis in the reader; the political situation of Portugal and Poland; the crisis of Ancien RĂŠgime; pseudo-scientific utterances involving climate or corpuscular theories; the whole ideological baggage of the Enlightenment; the novelty of colonies and faraway lands and pseudo-anthropological explanation of 'otherness' found in such places... this and much more finds literary expression in this digression and acquires a different color in hindsight of Sade's ample recourse to 'literary indebtedness'. The whole panorama is the perfect background for Sade's political and philosophical theories, uttered in turn by two seemingly antipodal characters: depopulation, autarky, moral relativism, contempt of state and clergy apparatuses in Europe appear under the grotesque mask of a brutish African population living a perfectly dystopian lifestyle practicing sodomy, pedophilia, cannibalism, human sacrifices and so forth. Once again -and Sade is no exception- utopia is the preferred medium to disperse unconventional political/philosophical messages.
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I certify that this ISM is my own unaided work, that any work or material included in it which is not my own has been identified and that it conforms to the word limits.
The word count for the essay is 4335 , this note, bibliography and beginning titles excluded.
SERGIO ZENERE
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