Publication and Reception
Both Justine and Juliette were published anonymously. Napoleon ordered the arrest of the author, and as a result Sade was incarcerated without trial for the last 13 years of his life.
The essay "Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality" in Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947) analyzes Juliette as the embodiment of the philosophy of enlightenment. They write: "she demonizes Catholicism as the most-up-to-date mythology, and with it civilization as a whole her procedures are enlightened and efficient as she goes about her work of sacrilege She favours system and consequence."
Read more about this topic: Juliette (novel)
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“An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.”
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