A treatment of Montesquieu's "Persian Letters", which argues that the novel is a philosophic critique of despotism in all its forms: domestic, political and religious. It shows that Montesquieu believed that the Enlightenment failed as a philosophy by not recognising man as an erotic being.

"Schaub offers scholars a new reading of Montesquieu's ^RPersian Letters^I....Her interpretations are persuasively defended." - CHOICE