‘Good sense’ and ‘fantasy’: Clashing images in the mid-nineteenth century

One would be wrong to see an aesthetic conflict in the fight that pits “L’Ecole du Bon Sens” and “L’Ecole de la Fantaisie” against one another beginning at the end of the 1840s on the Parisian stage. These labels were first and foremost standards brandished in the struggle for position in the literary field—a struggle waged in imaginaries to define the camps involved. This article offers a reflection on the stakes that are involved in the creation and spread of literary labels.