ABSTRACT
The 1745 publication of Marie-Madeleine Bonafon’s roman-à-clef Tanastès, set in a fanciful royal court marked by fantastical acts and sexual conquests achieved by royal figures, caused a short-lived but significant scandal. Well before the 200 published copies were sold, Bonafon was imprisoned in the Bastille and later confined to a cloister for many years. While her lurid writing and legal battles were the subject of great interest in her time and even later, Bonafon was largely dismissed as a writer, thought of as a chambermaid rather than as a woman of letters. Bonafon titled her novel Tanastès, a barely disguised anagram of “Est Satan”—in fact this title pointed directly to the king, the intended target of the piece. While Bonafon’s accusers and current historians agree that the work itself was inflammatory, it is only after reading her legal brief that modern readers may reliably conclude that Bonafon was truly seeking to threaten the king. How she managed to escape the cruelest of punishments is a testament to her talent as a strategist and writer. The rediscovery and afterlife of this small but pointed novel, and especially the writings surrounding the “Bonafon Affaire,” are the focus of this forensic investigation.
