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''The 120 Days of Sodom'', perhaps his most notorious book, was written by the Marquis whilst imprisoned in the [[Bastille]], where he witnessed daily executions from his window during the [[Reign of Terror]]. This book was adapted by controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini in that director's final and most radically offensive film.<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/</ref> The last years of the Marquis' life were spent in an [[insanity|insane]] asylum, though the reasons for this vary depending on the source. His years in the asylum have been dramatised in the critically-acclaimed play (and later film) ''Marat/Sade'',<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180073/</ref> as well as in the dramatic film ''Quills''.<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180073/</ref>
''The 120 Days of Sodom'', perhaps his most notorious book, was written by the Marquis whilst imprisoned in the [[Bastille]], where he witnessed daily executions from his window during the [[Reign of Terror]]. This book was adapted by controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini in that director's final and most radically offensive film.<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/</ref> The last years of the Marquis' life were spent in an [[insanity|insane]] asylum, though the reasons for this vary depending on the source. His years in the asylum have been dramatised in the critically-acclaimed play (and later film) ''Marat/Sade'',<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180073/</ref> as well as in the dramatic film ''Quills''.<ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0180073/</ref>
His work was largely banned in the [[USA]] until the relaxation of obscenity laws in the 1950s and 1960s.
His work was largely banned in the [[USA]] until the relaxation of obscenity laws in the 1950s and 1960s.
== Controversy and Revisionism ==
The Marquis De Sade has been treated with scorn in the two centuries following his death. Considered both a woman hating pioneer of the "art of smut", as well as the "original proponent of sexual sadism"<ref>John Philips, The Marquis De Sade : A Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford,2003,ix</ref>, the Marquid De Sade has laregly suffered from a construction of his person into an adjunct of popular mythology.
Popularly constructed to be "as sadistic as his monstrous fictional villains"<ref>John Philips,pp ix</ref>, Sade;s "thought" is much more complex and thoughfully expressed in the actual literature he produced. Many of the Marquis De Sade's modern detractors have yet to read his actual work.
Sade's simplsitic label derives from his body of works which include four sexually violent novels. Sade was anti-church and anti-state, a "life-ling rebel"<ref>Philips,pp X</ref>. Most of Sade's work was neither obscene nor extreme. "The sheer breadth and intellectual complexity of Sade's creative output encompasses the whole range of human experience, from sexuality to morality, from politics to religion, from metaphysics to aesthetics, from literature to life and death. Standing at the end of the classical era and the beginning of the modern age, Sade is, for Michel Foucault<ref>Philips,ppxi cf.1</ref>, a pivotal figure in the history of philosophy.<ref>Philips pp.xi</ref>"
Sade was the only French philosopher inheriting the era of the englighenment to see the full circle of the French revolution. Sade commented on events as they happened, proving his reputation as "a writer of astonishing energy and remarkable courage<ref>Philips,ppxii</ref>" several times over. Sade's unrelenting honesty was a hallmark of his writing, and it cost him his freedom, and eventually his life in the end. "Were it not for his explicit use of language and complete disregard for the artificially constructed taboos of a religious morality he despised, the novelty and profundity of Sade’s thought, and, above all, its fundamental modernity, would have long since secured him a place alongside the greatest authors and thinkers of the European Enlightenment.<ref>Philips, pp. xiii</ref>"
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===References===