📚 Save Big on Books! Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies)—discount automatically applied when you add books to your cart before checkout! 🛒

Sensing Violence: Reading with the Marquis de Sade - cover image

Copyright

Will McMorran;

Published On

2025-09-24

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-696-7
Hardback978-1-80511-697-4
PDF978-1-80511-698-1
HTML978-1-80511-700-1
EPUB978-1-80511-699-8

Language

  • English

Print Length

266 pages (xiv+252)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 18 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.71" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 22 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.87" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback511g (18.02oz)
Hardback683g (24.09oz)

Media

Illustrations6

OCLC Number

1540663962

THEMA

  • DSB
  • DSK
  • DSBH
  • JBFK
  • JMR

BISAC

  • LIT004150
  • LIT025000
  • LIT007000
  • LIT004290
  • PSY008000
  • SOC051000

Keywords

  • Marquis de Sade
  • Embodied Cognition
  • Violence
  • Pedagogy
  • Translation Studies
  • Reader Response

Sensing Violence

Reading with the Marquis de Sade

  • Will McMorran (author)
What does reading fictional violence do to us as readers? To find out, this provocative and original book turns to the works of an author synonymous with sexual violence: the Marquis de Sade. Drawing on psychology, cognitive literary studies, and empirical research, it argues that reading is a fundamentally embodied act – and one that implicates us far more than we might like to think in fictional depictions of violence.

This book turns not just to Sade for answers, but to his readers. Where previous studies have focussed either on Sade’s language or his philosophy, this one places the lived experience of actual readers at the heart of its investigations. Taking particular scenes from Sade’s fiction, from a young girl posing as a statue in ‘Eugénie de Franval’ to the brutal rape of the heroine of Justine, this book explores what happens not just on the page but in the minds and bodies of readers as they bring these scenes to life.

Drawing on questionnaires completed by readers of those scenes, and on his own experience as a reader, teacher and translator of Sade, the author challenges the disembodied approach that has dominated Sade studies and literary criticism more broadly over recent decades. This is not just a book about Sade—it’s a radical exploration of what happens to us when we are confronted with scenes of violence. Urgent, accessible, and personal, it offers a new model for understanding reading as a matter of making sensations as well as making sense.

Endorsements

In his important, compelling, and beautifully written book, Will McMorran challenges the critical consensus about Sade. Brining together literary analysis, theoretical deftness, and empirical research, he encourages us to take a more holistic – and hopefully more ethical – approach to reading and teaching about sexual violence in literature.

Prof Thomas Wynn

University of Durham

Additional Resources

[spreadsheet]Eugenie Questionnaire
[spreadsheet]Justine Questionnaire
[document]EPUB Accessibility Report

Contents

Introduction

(pp. 1–26)
  • Will McMorran

1. Looking and Touching with Eugénie

(pp. 27–82)
  • Will McMorran

2. Hearing and Feeling with Justine

(pp. 83–136)
  • Will McMorran

3. Translating with Sade

(pp. 137–174)
  • Will McMorran

4. Teaching with Sade

(pp. 175–208)
  • Will McMorran

Conclusion

(pp. 209–218)
  • Will McMorran

Contributors

Will McMorran

(author)
Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary, University of London

Will McMorran is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London. He has published several articles and book chapters on Sade and the history of his reception, and has edited and translated two of his works: 'The 120 Days of Sodom' (2016) for Penguin Classics with Thomas Wynn, which was awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and The Marquise de Gange (2021) for Oxford World’s Classics. His work as a translator has also included several stories for 'The Penguin Book of French Short Stories' (2022), and Philippe Brenot’s graphic history, 'The Story of Sex' (2016).