Sade éducateur. La perversion textuelle et les paradoxes d’une pédagogie subversive

This article explores how Sade’s novels convey a precise meta-literary pedagogy, focused on a conscious reversal of the pedagogical rhetoric typical of sentimental philosophy in general, and of Rousseau’s philosophy in particular. This aspect is especially evident in the so-called honest writings. In these writings, instead of fighting sentimentalism from the outside, Sade destroys from the interior the moral foundations of sentimentality, using its own stylistic principles (the edifying tale) and its own theoretical principles (the pathos and the doctrine of sympathy).