SOURCE: "The Sade Machine," in Studies on Voltaire in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. XCVIII, 1972, pp. 207-18.

In the following excerpt, Lee evaluates Sade's technique in his "iconoclastic" novels in terms of its function and apparent purpose.

In the last pages of his novel Juliette, Sade describes nature in convulsive upheaval. Lightning and turbulent wind attack the universe so violently that, in the author's words, 'On euit dit que la nature, ennuyee de ses ouvrages, fut prete a confondre tous les elements pour les contraindre a des formes nouvelles.'

Patterning himself on this cataclysmic nature, Sade the novelist rejected the bland literature of his predecessors and set about to constrain thought and its expression into new forms. He constructed an elaborate machine, a literary battering ram designed to smash the foundations of moral rectitude for centuries to come. Our century has considered the Sadian machine with increasing interest...