Arlette Farge is Director of Research in Modern History at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris and the author of more than a dozen books, including Fragile Lives and The Allure of the Archive.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher and held the Chair in the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. He is often considered the most influential political theorist of the second half of the twentieth century. His most notable works include History of Madness, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality, among others.

Nancy Luxon is associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of Crisis of Authority: Politics, Trust,and Truth-Telling in Freud and Foucault.

Thomas Scott-Railton is a freelance French-English translator living in Brooklyn, New York, and previously translated Arlette Farge’s The Allure of the Archive.

Contents
Translator’s Preface
Editor’s Introduction
Presentation
The King’s Orders
At the Family’s Request
1728–1758: A Survey
1. Marital Discord
Putting and End to One’s Misery
The Pact Broken
Debauch: Masculine Spaces, Feminine Spaces
The Gaze of Others
The Imprisonment Obtained or the Beginning of a Story
Obscure “Police Clarifications”
The Singular Status of Repentance
Documents 1. Marital Discord
Households in Ruin
The Imprisonment of Wives
The Debauch of Husbands
The Tale of a Request
2. Parents and Children
Conflicts of Interest
Disturbance
“Conflicts at the Threshold”
Departure for the Islands
The Honor of Families
Parental Ethics
Documents 2. Parents and Children
The Disruption of Affairs
Shameful Concubinage
The Dishonor of Waywardness
Domestic Violence
Bad Apprentices
Exiles
Family Honor
The Parental Ethos of 1728: The Importance of Sentiment
The Parental Ethos of 1758: The Duty to Educate
3. When Addressing the King
From Use to Abuse
Representation and Secrecy
The End of Lettres de Cachet
Afterword
Arlette Farge
Notes
Index to Names
Index to Places