De Sade: Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue [1791], 1st/2; Pls read to p129
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Best known today as the eponym of “sadism,” Donation-Alphonse-François, Marquis de Sade, was, among other things, a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher, writer, libertine, and prisoner, in various institutions, including the Bastille, for 32 of his 74 years. The 1797 “revised” publication of Justine resulted in his arrest in 1801, without charges, his imprisonment, without trial, and eventual confinement in the Charenton insane asylum for the last 12 years of his life. Let’s see for ourselves what the fuss was all about, and if his notorious scribbling was worth the two centuries of infamy that followed.
Join us for the first of two sessions as we explore de Sade's philosophical justifications for the depravity heaped upon the virtuous Justine. Note the reference to Voltaire in the opening pages of the story.
Hosted by Let's Read! Classics of the Western Canon [LR!CWC] -a Los Angeles-based Meetup which started in 2011 reading Proust and now is catching up on the classics we missed in school or now want to revisit at a wiser stage of life.
***Join our Meetup and RVSP for Sade. https://www.meetup.com/LetsReadClassics/events/280580882/
Sunday, October 3, 2021, 10am - 12pm PDT.
Please read to page 129 (Oxford World's Classics edition) and the paragraph ending with,
"The monotony of my stay there would convey itself to my story, and so it seems best to move immediately thereafter to the event that finally got me out of this foul cesspool."
If reading the PDF (see below), search for the similar phrase "ghastly sewer" to find your stopping point in the middle of section 23.
Recommended Edition:
Sade. Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue. Translated by John Phillips. New York: Oxford Univ. Press., 2012. ISBN: 9780199572847. Used: $13+
Bookfinder: https://www.bookfinder.com
Search via ISBN: for "9780199572847"
Also available from public libraries.
To attend this online Meetup, RSVP here and then, at start time, paste the following URL into your browser: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83811364123
2021 Schedule (subject to change):
Oct 3: de Sade: Justine [1791] ISBN: 9780199572847 [1st session]
Oct 17: de Sade: Justine [1791] ISBN: 9780199572847 [2nd session]
Oct 31: Lewis: The Monk [1794] ISBN: 9780198704454 [1st session]
Nov 14: Lewis: The Monk [1794] ISBN: 9780198704454 [2nd session]
Nov 28: Hoffmann: Stories [1817] ISBN: 9780140443929 [1-2 sessions]
Dec: Shelley: Frankenstein [1818] ISBN: 978039392793 [2 sessions]
***Join our Meetup and RVSP for Sade. https://www.meetup.com/LetsReadClassics/events/280580882/
Please recommend to the group any secondary sources you find especially helpful.