Marquis de Sade (born Donatien Alphonse Francois) is known principally in connection with the association of his name with sadism, or the obtaining of pleasure through cruelty to others. The Marquis was a Frenchman of the aristocratic class who adhered to the principles of the French Revolution. His large body of written work is a paean to the lifestyle he admired and practiced – that of a sexual libertine of a violent bent, unfettered by law or morality. De Sade spent almost half of his life in prisons or insane asylums. Upon his death, much of his work was destroyed by his son, and subsequent generations disavowed his very existence. In the late 1940s, the then current Marquis de Sade stumbled upon information of his ancestor and his reputation, and set about learning more about him, collecting his extant works, and laboring to establish him as a progenitor of whom to be proud. Today, the Marquis de Sade remains a figure of fascination, and is as likely to be honored as a proponent of literary freedom and extreme individualism as a vilified proponent of immoral and, well, sadistic behavior.
