ABSTRACT
Lynn Hunt formulates a new question for historians to ponder, and the answers she develops take scholarship in an exciting direction. She does not ask whether Marie Antoinette was guilty or innocent of the crimes charged against her; nor is she interested per se in why the queen was so hated by the French people even before the Revolution began. Rather, she wonders why such a rich pornographic literature about the queen – reaching as many as 126 pamphlets – infiltrated the country both before and during the revolutionary epoch.
