SOURCE: Evans, Arthur R., Jr. “The Notational, Cumulative Sentence” and “Formal, Mannerist Patterns.” In The Literary Art of Eugène Fromentin: A Study in Style and Motif, pp. 47-63; 64-95. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1964.

In the following essay, Evans notes Fromentin's use of symmetry, rhythm, and balance in his writing.

Fromentin's prose is artistic, self-conscious, and highly disciplined, its distinguishing qualities deriving ultimately from expressive tendencies which are intimately related. A strongly classic formal sense evidenced in the constant use of symmetries, parallelisms, and correspondences works in harmony with a descriptive, notational, picturesque concern apparent in a sentence movement which is parenthetical and cumulative.¹ The fusion of these two ingredients makes for a sustained, periodic, and elaborative rhythm, amply and logically defined. Though often slow and heavy in movement, it is at other times graceful and limpid, and occasionally energetic, vibrant, and emphatic. Fromentin's literary art evolves...