Using a wide range of artistic, iconographic, literary and historical sources, Lynn Hunt undertakes a Freudian influenced analysis of the French Revolution to examine the breakdown of patriarchal model of authority.

This latest work from an author known for her contributions to the new cultural history is a daring, multidisciplinary investigation of the imaginative foundations of modern politics. Hunt uses the term `Family Romance', (coined by Freud to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's family and belonging to one of higher social standing), in a broader sense, to describe the images of the familial order that structured the collective political unconscious. In a wide-ranging account that uses novels, engravings, paintings, speeches, newspaper editorials, pornographic writing, and revolutionary legislation about the family, Hunt shows that the politics of the French Revolution were experienced through the network of the family romance.

`All in all, the book offers exciting and novel perspectives on the Revolution, and on politics more generally, ... a vindication of the power and importance of cultural history, ...' - Patrick Joyce Times Higher Education Supplement`... the book offers exciting and novel perspectives on the Revolution, ... Hunt's book is a vindication of the power and importance of cultural history , and a significant signpost to a new sort of political history.' - Times Higher Education`This is European cultural history at its best.' - France in Print