Les Chants de Maldoror is based around a character called Maldoror, a figure of unrelenting evil who has forsaken God and mankind. The book combines an obscene and violent narrative with vivid and often surrealistic imagery. In 1917, French writer Philippe Soupault discovered a copy of "Les Chan

Atmospheric, Baroque, Excessive, Grotesque, Hallucinatory, Perverse, Rebel, Surrealist poetry, Violent, Visceral

De Sade's writing is the endless elaboration of a single principle: "Virtue is vice, and vice is virtue" -- an incitement to debauchery, depravity, and decadence, and a testament to the value of the animal passions. But de Sade didn't merely celebrate and praise acts of sexual perversion and violence

Agitated, Erotic, Excessive, Literature of transgression, Perverse, Phallic, Primal, Repetitive, Violent

Poe once wrote that all worldly things contain "the germ of their inevitable annihilation." Pretty cheerful stuff -- clearly this was a man obsessed with ruin and with death. His characters typically suffer from various forms of mental and physical deterioration; their minds seem to have a predilecti

Anxiety, Dark, Death, Gothic fiction, Grotesque, Intense, Lyrical, Sublime, Symbolist poetry, Violent

In Sophocles' world, the gods have receded. They've already determined (more or less) the fate of human beings and are content to watch from a comfortable distance. Of course, it's unclear exactly what their motives are; it all seems basically arbitrary and cruel. Indeed, the morality of the gods is

Classical, Classical greek, Excessive, Pathos, Sublime, Tense, Tragic, Violent