"From Lacan to Dalâi, through Simone de Beauvoir, Beckett, Horkheimer, Burroughs, Pasolini, Foucault, Deleuze, up to éZiézek, the Marquis de Sade's influence and impact in modernism and modern thinking is hard to measure. Understanding Sade, Understanding Modernism presents its readers with a chance to reflect on the importance of this radical oeuvre from different perspectives. Contributors examine Sadean literature and thought through some of its main texts in a series of comparative essays not only examining Sade's influence in French, European, and American thought, but also criticizing it in the context of some of modern philosophy's most relevant subjects"--