La Notion de l’inceste heureux dans la littérature utopique de la fin du xviiie siècle
This article examines ways in which the existence of incestuous relationships at the heart of the utopian project at the end of the Eighteenth century poses a philosophical challenge. When a utopian community is built on the principle of a definite improvement, how is it possible to envision a positive future when incest is introduced at the foundation of a society that pretends to be better than the existing one? Furthermore, how is it possible to establish laws and rules in a society when the initial members of this society have not been able to respect a law supposedly inviolable? Lastly, how can a utopian community, which thrives to be an ideological model, adopt incest as a legitimate possibility or even a norm? This article explores how several prerevolutionary utopias try to answer all those questions. Among the texts it considers are Guillaume Grivel’s L’Isle inconnue, Giacomo Casanova’s L’Icosameron, and Jacques Henri-Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie.