Through studies of the literature of Antoine François Prévost, Claude Crébillon, Pierre de Marivaux, and Françoise de Graffigny among others, Rutler demonstrates how the heteronormative bourgeois family's rise to dominance in late-eighteenth-century France had long been contested within the fictional worlds of many French authors.

Queering the Enlightenment analyzes French literature from the 1730s and 40s to illuminate the potential of queer forms of kinship to dismantle the patriarchy and to help us imagine what might take its place. Through studies of Prévost, Graffigny, Marivaux, and Crébillon, Tracy Rutler uncovers a current of resistance to the rise of the heteronormative family in 18th-century France.