| Summary: | Despite it decriminalization in 1791, incest continues to be seen as a crime and as a monstrosity in the French social imaginary. Even though disgraceful and subject of taboo, the French judicial archives saved the traces of incest in the numerous trials intended for rape or attentat à la pudeur during the nineteenth century. Furthermore, as a deviance, the incest was a subject of scientific studies all along the century that contributed to write the crime and it social imaginary. Then, the judicial archives and their exclusive competences on the definition of the crime must be questioned. A fine study on the practice of the French magistrates and on the discourses held by the actors of the crime seems to be a relevant key to approach the criminal sphere and to question the penal exclusivity of the criminality for the historian. What can this confrontation between the discourses reveal on the incest and its prohibition in the nineteenth century France ?
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