Sade and Casanova: strategic libertinism in the post-revolutionary era

• Grant number: 11/18905-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: January 01, 2012
• End date: February 21, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: André Luiz Barros da Silva
• Grantee: André Luiz Barros da Silva
• Host Investigator: Michel Delon
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4), France

Abstract

This research intend to be an investigation of the narrative strategies in the works Les crimes de l'amour [The crimes of love] (short-stories, 1799) and Histoire secrète d'Isabelle de Bavière [The secret history of Isabelle de Bavière] (novel, 1814), by Marquis de Sade, and some passages [?] describing the French stays of Casanova in France, in his autobiography Histoire de ma vie [History of my life] (1789-1798). The aim is to describe how these texts represent the shock between the sentimental-optimist and the libertine-pessimistic ethoi, in the pathetic dimension of the plots and in the History representation. The target of the investigation is to know how these works incorporate the antagonistic ethoi, since both authors counteract the democratic sentimentalism surreptitiously. In the short-stories, Sade alternate topoi, plots and scenarios of classical profile with the new sentimentalism of family taboos (incest, fathers searching husbands for their daughters, kidnapping of brides etc.). In the novel, he empties the classical History (of the "greats" of France) in favor of the erotic and politic pessimism. In both works, the man is saw as fundamentally (auto) destructive, and acts positively only as tactic or weakness. Casanova uses lyrical and neoclassical serenity to transmit a pessimistic and hedonistic view of an intense here-and-now, without plans or projects. The present work will investigate these types of narratives by means of manuscripts (in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France) and first editions research of the chosen corpus. (AU)