Alfred de Musset Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Vivien L. Rubin

Critical Essay by Vivien L. Rubin

SOURCE: Rubin, Vivien L. “The Idea of the Clown in Musset's Fantasio.” French Review 52, no. 5 (April 1979): 724-30.

In the following essay, Rubin underscores Musset's ironic evocation of Fantasio as a court jester figure associated with ennui, futility, and disenchantment rather than light-hearted comedy.

As David Sices has commented, “Fantasio is a play that seems to generate misunderstandings.”¹ One misunderstanding which persists and which is shared by a number of distinguished commentators is, I believe, a crucial one. It is, to put it briefly, the belief that, alone among the plays of Musset's most creative dramatic period, Fantasio is a work “in which for once everything works out for the best.”² To read Fantasio in this way is to fail to recognize fully the use that Musset makes here of the idea of the clown and hence is to miss one of the fundamental ironies of a play...
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