The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette (en anglais)

I felt like mentioning this, since no one has previously raised this up. This is more for historians or the very keen, as such detailed essays may not be easy to read, particularly if you are not especially fluent in English. In any case, do check out The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political pornography and the problem of the feminine in the French Revolution by Lynn Hunt. Hunt is one of my favourite historians of the Revolution, and particularly so when it comes to feminism and such issues. Besides, this deals more than adequately in answering the questions on why the pornographic literature appeared as they did and when they did so, as well as providing a fantastic backdrop for understanding reactions to such works during this time. I quote from Gary Kates (editor of Recent Debates & New Controversies, in which this essay appeared), who wrote a short summary on Hunt's work, as part of the book:

Citation :

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. Armed with both feminist and literary criticism at her side, and echoing current debates over the ways in which obscene literature exploits women in our own society, Hunt uses the case of Queen Marie Antoinette to reveal Jacobin attitudes towards gender and sexuality. The queen became emblematic of any woman’s attempt to play a public and political role. The revolutionaries tended to view republican politics as an ordinary man’s game: not only were monarchs excluded, but all women as well. Here Hunt offers a sharp indictment of revolutionary political culture as being self-consciously masculinist.

No doubt there are those who have read this before, but just a heads up to all who haven't.