SOURCE: King, Adele. “The Significance of Style in Fantasio.” Language and Style 4, no. 1 (fall 1971): 301-10.

In the following essay, King analyzes various modes of language—poetic, prosaic, and sentimental—employed in Musset's drama Fantasio, describing the characters and themes associated with each.

The way we use language often reveals our basic attitudes towards life. In Musset's Fantasio there are three styles of language, three ways of looking at life. Fantasio and his friends are spontaneous and playful. Their sense of values is not predetermined by fixed ideas, but is discovered in the process of living. The language they use is witty, metaphoric, and nuanced. We might call this language poetic, since it contains shades of feeling and insight only expressible through word-play. Contrasted to Fantasio and his friends is the court, which represents responsibility, duty, and the fixed values of society. Those aligned with the values of the...