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Missionaries played a central role in the colonial system in Congo – they were a key part of the well-known triad consisting of state, church, and corporations. During the Belgian Congo period (1908–1960), missionaries of diverse congregations were in charge of health care and education, and their religious services were the only ones officially recognized. Narratives have strongly shaped how these missionaries operated. One could even say that the conversion and missionary narrative define what it means to set up a successful 'mission'. In my contribution, I explore how these narratives surface in two novels written in the two decades after Congo's Independence in 1960. Entre les eaux (1973) by V.Y. Mudimbe and Het stigma (1970) by Jacques Bergeyck both refer to the missionary activities in mid-century Congo but their use of the conversion and missionary narrative complicates the common-sense understanding of them. By comparing a Flemish and a Congolese novel, this article aims to decentre the Flemish literary world as the locus where these narratives gain their meaning. By taking a more transnational, multilingual context as a starting point, it wants to shed new light on the ways in which the European missionary presence in Congo has been imagined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I create a place-centered and relational context for reading Eenige bladzijden uit het Boek der Natuur (Some pages from the Book of Nature), a didactical dialogue on natural history from 1846, written by Flanders' national novelist from the nineteenth century, Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883). This context does not focus on his biography or his contributions to a pedagogical Flemish national identity, but relates the work to our present (urban) environment. By doing so, often overlooked aspects in Conscience's Romantic thought come to the fore: the limitations he put to nationalist frameworks for understanding nature and his attempt at opening up the capacities of literary imagination. For Conscience, literary imagination – rather than religious tradition or empirical precision from physics –, even in a wild and chaotic text, appeared most suitable to convey the Humboldtian idea of the interconnectedness and unity of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a case study of a forgotten text: a Flemish story written by Joseph Octave Delepierre about a Bruges sculptor, published in French in 1837. It mentions technological innovations and legal circumstances created the settings in which the story could go viral, what made it so attractive for reuse was its thematic diversity; and also mentions lack of international copyright legislation until the 1886 Berne Convention meant that for most of the century texts could be copied.

Copyright of Impossibilia: Revista Internacional de Estudios Literarios is the property of Impossibilia: Revista Internacional de Estudios Literarios and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses literary translations from Dutch between 1990 and 2020, i. e. from the first post-revolutionary year to the last completed year. We are interested in what the literary market looked like after the Velvet Revolution, who translated and keeps translating, and what the criteria are for selecting Dutch works for translation. We also dis- cuss the founder of the Czech translation school, Olga Krijtová, and her influence on Dutch literature in Czech translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the mid-nineteenth century, European literature abounded with book illustrations and the use of a pictorial style. Depending on the context and perspective, this literary fashion was associated with a threatening democratization of literature or perceived as a chance to reach new audiences. This article investigates whether the striking interactions between text and image in the internationally popular novella Hoe men schilder wordt (1843) by the Flemish author Hendrik Conscience can be regarded as a factor in its nineteenth-century popularity, and as a starting point for Conscience's current image as an author of 'popular' literature, aiming at broad upcoming audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erwin Mortier's novel Marcel (1999) addresses the still controversial topic of the Flemish collaboration with the Germans during the Second World War, and the way the Belgian state subsequently dealt with it. Told from the perspective of a grandchild of the guilty generation, Mortier's novel has often been read as a narrative of emerging understanding and reconciliation. Seen through the prism of Amy Elias's concept of the historical sublime, the novel in fact suggests that the truth about the past remains inaccessible, even as the child protagonist is driven by a powerful desire to unveil it. Through the use of extended metaphors of signification, concealment and revelation, working in tandem with a narrative of a frequently disturbing sexual awakening, Marcel presents the urge to unveil the truth in and of history as a blind and desperate quest that is doomed to destroy the object of its desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erwin Mortier's acclaimed debut novel Marcel, first published nearly twenty years ago, tells the story of a Flemish family haunted by a dark past: the involvement of several members in the wartime collaboration with the German occupier. The novel has usually been read as a narrative of reconciliation, showing the often painful process of successive generations gradually gaining some understanding of the past and coming to terms with it, before being able finally to lay its guilty weight to rest. However, a close reading and historial contextualisation of Marcel reveals a much more complex picture, casting doubt both on the accuracy of the characters' understanding and the sincerity of their intentions. This article is the first to offer a rival interpretation of Mortier's novel, proposing that, rather than recognising their guilty past, the characters may be unable or unwilling to acknowledge it as such, and could instead be poised to sow the seeds of its continuation and repetition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1941, two progressive educationalists, Jozef Emiel Verheyen and Leo Roels, published a new pedagogical journal, Vlaamsche Paedagogiek (Flemish Pedagogy, 1941–1944). The journal aimed to contribute to the development and proliferation of a pedagogy that rooted in the Flemish soil and national character. Verheyen and Roels were convinced that "strong personalities could only prosper in a natural (volkseigen) atmosphere, carried by [the Flemish] language". By presenting a case-study of Vlaamsche Paedagogiek, this article documents how, in Flemish progressive educational circles, the discourse shifted in the direction of a flamingant antimodern discourse, revolving around notions of character formation, discipline and the Heimat. This article suggests that, in many ways, Vlaamsche Paedagogiek was a radicalisation of the journals' predecessor, Moderne School (Modern School, 1927–1941), a Flemish progressive education journal. Both journals centred on the same principles. Yet, whereas Moderne School used progressive education principles to establish a school that was closer to reality, Vlaamsche Paedagogiek aimed to use education as a tool for Flanders' cultural emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new sociological model for understanding the circulation of a single widely translated book, from local creation to transnational production and reception. Reconstructing the career of War and Turpentine by the Dutch-speaking Belgian author Stefan Hertmans, it examines the book's circulation as a process mediated through a transnational literary field linking the literary field of the original and the many separate yet co-implicated national literary fields of its translations. It is argued that War and Turpentine's success, which was by no means guaranteed, can be explained by cumulative interactions across these fields. Three aspects are investigated to illustrate cross-field interactions: the timely and fortuitous interventions of the work's foreign rights manager, its anglophone reception, and the covers of its various translations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 140 years between 1850 and 1990 cover an important period from the beginning of modern literature and modern publishing houses in the second half of the nineteenth century till the end of the Communist regime. Over this period some 450 Dutch and Flemish literary works were translated into Czech and some 75 into Slovak. Historical novels and novellas make up a good part of them. As Connor (2015) has clearly shown, historical novels were a popular genre in Communist times for ideological reasons. They were considered "excellent educational instruments for people not yet apt to understand heavier work like the Communist Manifesto" as the young translator Olga Krijtová wrote to the Communist Dutch writer Theun de Vries in the early 1950s. Reviews, editor's reports and editorial statements indicate, however, that historical novels had a similar function already before Communism, from the beginnings of Czech and Slovak translation of Dutch written literature. In this paper, we will discuss several historical novels in Czech translation by Hendrik Conscience, Louis Couperus, Madelon Székely-Lulofs, Theun de Vries, and Harry Mulisch – to illustrate changing ideological views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shock of the First World War resulted in a range of initiatives that, on the artistic level, radically called into question a number of fundamental concepts. While the function of new art was a topic that was discussed in different European countries, the international orientation of each national art differed from country to country. In Belgium, this was a complex issue. Notions such as ‘literature’ and especially ‘internationalism’ became the subject of a harsh battle for definition that was carried out in several literary and artistic magazines. In this article, I look at how these terms were defined within the artistic group surrounding the Brussels magazine L’Art libre (1919–22). I will give a general definition of internationalism in order to then elaborate the extent to which it may come into conflict with a focus on local, Flemish reality. As a social entity, Flanders did indeed fit into the internationalist program to recognize suppressed nations. Yet as an artistic entity, its existence was more problematically situated within a tendency for ever-increasing artistic internationalization. My analysis will show a number of discursive and argumentative strategies used by writers and critics in order to legitimate the idea of ‘Flanders’, both as a literary and as a social entity.

Although scholars in the Netherlands have already attempted to integrate literary theories on migration with the specific Dutch context, none such attempts have so far been made for Flemish literature. The current paper therefore scrutinises the novel Los by Tom Naegels, an (autobiographical) account of the riots in Borgerhout (Antwerp) after the murder on Islam teacher Mohamed Achrak in 2002. As the author also covered these events as a journalist, the analysis investigates the manner in which this topical matter is intertwined with the more personal story about the struggle conducted by Naegels's grandfather for euthanasia. The paper leans on Jérôme Meizoz's posture theory, which differentiates the author figure from the biographical person and the narrator. In addition, the novel is situated within the contemporary literary return towards realism and Flemish literature's negotiation of Flemish identity. By focussing on these three elements – the theme of migration, realism and Flemish identity – the paper attempts to contribute to the development of a literary theory on migration in Flanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ernest Claes is among the many interwar Flemish and Dutch writers who have gone down in history as so-called "storytellers" or "vertellers". Although this concept is very often used to describe their authorship, its culturalhistorical connotations have never been studied systematically. This article aims to fill this scientific lacuna by analyzing the relationship between narrative texts of the interwar period and the themes and techniques of the folk tradition of oral storytelling. Claes and two of his narrative texts function as representative case studies. To begin, the present paper zooms in on Claes' views on the tradition of oral storytelling and links them with an essay on the same topic by Walter Benjamin, a contemporary of his. Next, two narrative texts by Claes are interpreted as literary revitalizations of the storytellers' tradition and of its epistemic functions. The knowledge of storytellers, so the argument goes, exceeds the merely regional but also concerns the exotic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship in Dutch literature of the interwar years has revalued to an important degree the genre of regional or rural literature. Whereas existent research in this field mainly zooms in on the thematic motives and rhetorical structures of the regional text, this paper aims at combining a textual and contextual approach. It hopes to do so by linking the functions of the regional genre to the construction of the regional author's ethos or authority outside his oeuvre. One author here functions as a representative case in point: Warden Oom (Edward Vermeulen), a once successful but now forgotten Flemish folk writer and regionalist. This paper analyzes how Vermeulen, in autobiographical documents and interviews, embodies both an encyclopedic and an artistic authority. These two forms of extra-literary authority are a means to guarantee, so the argument goes, the efficacy of the informative and documentary as well as the esthetic functions of Vermeulen's regional oeuvre. In this way, this paper not only pays attention to the rarely documented and therefore highly neglected voice of the regional author himself but it also grasps these autobiographical writings to situate the regional text in its broader context. Moreover, this article's focus on the esthetic ambitions and functions of the regional author and his oeuvre may shed a new light on a genre which is usually considered to be heteronomous in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since mid-19th century Dutch and Flemish literature has often been translated into Central European languages. We find authors like Conscience, Multatuli or Heijermans almost everywhere, often with the same works. Until the late 19th century translations were often made via German. Czech had a special position. Though there is not that much translated into this language as into German, until World War II Czech was the language into which was translated more than into other Central European languages. Until the 20s many translators were writers themselves. This gives rise to questions such as how the choice was made, what is the position of a particular author or his work within translated literature? How was Dutch literature defined? In this paper, we give a look how the choice was made, at the position of translators of Dutch literature in the late 19th and early 20th century in the Czech literary field, the position of Dutch in their work and how this literature was received in translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matsombo’s stories: Jef Geeraerts’s representation of the 'Congo crisis' in Het verhaal van Matsombo The so-called Congo crisis (1960-1965) received a great deal of attention internationally. A literary response in Dutch to what happened in the former Belgian colony is Het verhaal van Matsombo (Matsombo’s story) by Flemish writer and former colonial civil servant, Jef Geeraerts. Until now, little critical attention has been given to Het verhaal van Matsombo, despite regular reprints of the text. This article researches how the Congo crisis is represented in Geeraerts’s novel. Although Geeraerts’s depiction of colonial conflict is, in certain respects, close to that of Franz Fanon, Geeraerts’s is ultimately a Western view.

This paper focuses on how readers participate in literary culture through social media environments. The study involves an observation of the website and Facebook group of the Flemish reading initiative Iedereenleest.be (EverybodyReads.be), and includes in-depth interviews with highly active participants. We introduce the concept of affinity spaces to develop our understanding of how readers engage in a variety of literary practices within social media environments dedicated to literature and reading. Based on a qualitative thematic analysis of the interview data we discuss four ways in which users characterize literary and social media practices. As such, the study provides insight into readers’ understanding and appreciation of the social aspects of participating in literary culture within social media environments. It also shows how they perceive and negotiate their role within these environments. The image presented by the participants confirms the characterization of social media as affinity spaces and stresses the crucial importance of acknowledging, supporting and encouraging people's passions and interests by allowing engagement in a variety of literary practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on the belief that in every historical period, there is a certain part of the literary production that reflects the recent events or tendencies in the contemporary society. Using my dissertation, in which I did research on the representations of the globalisation in recent Dutch and Flemish fiction, as an example of which issues were or were not represented in a number of selected Dutch-written novels, I point out that ecology, which turned to be a non-issue in my corpus, deserves new attention at this moment. My article suggests some attitudes that can help to interpret the ecological issues and the tightly connected subject of animal rights. The new challenges for the literary studies are first of all presented by the ecocriticism and the (critical) animal studies [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1970s and 1980s, ‘period adaptations,’ or period films based on the Flemish literary patrimony, were the most prominent and prestigious genre of film production in Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Connecting the observation that official film policy largely determines Flemish film production with the dominant interpretation of period adaptations in Flemish cultural and national terms, these films are often seen as the product of an official Flemish film policy strategy. Drawing on original archival research and interviews with policy actors and film-makers, this article offers a detailed historical account of the Flemish film support process behind the allocation of official film funds for period adaptations and how the national question was involved. Contrary to common assumptions, this film support process was a very complex and often ambiguous one, whereby Flemish cultural nationalist concerns could work both to the advantage and to the disadvantage of period adaptation projects. While the Minister of Culture’s advisory board (the film commission) took a key role within this process, the agency of a variety of other actors (most notably Flemish public television and film producers) should also be taken into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the institutional context of literature in Flanders Herman de Coninck (1944–97) was an important player (or “actor”). The author is well known as a poet, a literary critic and editor of the Dutch Granta-like magazine Nieuw Wereldtijdschrift (NWT). Academics and essayists have paid much critical attention to de Coninck’s poetics and aesthetic views. In a recent anthology of Flemish poetry since the sixties, Hotel New Flandres (2008), he is called an innovative “paradigmatic poet” in the poetry system of Flanders. Much less known is his place in and relationship to the field of Afrikaans literature. Daniel Hugo published two anthologies with poetry of de Coninck in Afrikaans and Antjie Krog was invited by the Flemish editor to participate in NWT. Later on, these essays were rewritten and brought together in Krog’s Country of My Skull. Reading prose and poetry by de Coninck and focusing on references to South Africa, we can study his perspective on Afrikaans (language and literature), his points of view on social and political developments in the post-apartheid era. The purpose of this article is to present documentary material to illustrate and comment on de Coninck’s ideas on literature, language and society. This commentary on ideological and aesthetic opinions can form the basis for further discursive and institutional research with regard to the presence in and the image building of South Africa in the works by a canonized Flemish writer.

Copyright of Image & Narrative is the property of Image & Narrative and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius' (1547-1606) two works, the Constantia and the Politica are analysed here as examples of the redefinition of the boundaries between public and private brought about in the late sixteenth century. This was the result of many factors, among which the wars of religion was perhaps the most prominent. Lipsius' experience of the wars, his work, his associated flights and confessional switches make him an ideal commentator on the disjunction between public and private. In the two works under consideration, prudence and constancy are ascribed to the two domains while the different traits of the two virtues reflect on the different moral framework of public and private. The moral superiority of the private realm is associated with the divine through man's personal relationship with God following the Stoic notion of the kinship between human and divine reason. Prudence, an entirely human and temporal virtue, equips man in his conduct through the instability and depravity of temporal/human affairs. Man can still be constant, however, and maintain his morality and religious integrity in private. Thus, in the context of the continuous religious tension and political instability the moral implications of the distinction between the two realms render the discourse of the relationship between public-private and divine-temporal into an issue regarding the limits of ecclesiastical and political jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection of a base text for textual edition is not only a matter of literary-historical data or a consideration based on the genetic process or the publishing history of a work of art. Also the poetics or aesthetics of the editor are in some cases decisive for that (final/fundamental) choice. Depending on the poetical ideas of an editor one or another authorized text is chosen for the final edition. In that way the editor's choice determines the image of a literary work for a cultural community and does so for several years, if not for ever. In some cases we deal with a variety of text versions in a literary archive. Each of these texts is written from an aesthetic point of view and represents a stage in the development of an author. From that perspective it is not only relevant but also necessary to present all full text versions and for instance not only the variants in a specific apparatus. For my article I want to consider the collected poems by Hugo Claus (1929-2008). Four years after his death it becomes necessary to discuss the way in which scientific editors will present the collected works of the Flemish author. I want to suggest an edition with all complete versions of the poems. Claus was a legendary re-writer of his own (and even other's) literary texts. For instance, when he presented a new collection of his poems in the sixties and the nineties, he worked on a different version. From this point of view, each version represents another or a slightly different poetical vision by the author. The digital medium can provide an environment to present all full text (versions). Also in a published edition I would like to consider a publication of all different versions. Perhaps we have to make a difference between a scholarly edition, intended for researchers who work on the complete works by Claus, and an edition for an interested public (of non-scholars). Although these readers also deserve a complete works by Claus, including all versions of texts Claus worked on during different periods in his writing career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the institutional context of literature in Flanders Herman de Coninck (1944-97) was an important player (or "actor"). The author is well known as a poet, a literary critic and editor of the Dutch Granta-like magazine Nieuw Wereldtijdschrift (NWT). Academics and essayists have paid much critical attention to de Coninck's poetics and aesthetic views. In a recent anthology of Flemish poetry since the sixties, Hotel New Flandres (2008), he is called an innovative "paradigmatic poet" in the poetry system of Flanders. Much less known is his place in and relationship to the field of Afrikaans literature. Daniel Hugo published two anthologies with poetry of de Coninck in Afrikaans and Antjie Krog was invited by the Flemish editor to participate in NWT. Later on, these essays were rewritten and brought together in Krog's Country of My Skull. Reading prose and poetry by de Coninck and focusing on references to South Africa, we can study his perspective on Afrikaans (language and literature), his points of view on social and political developments in the post-apartheid era. The purpose of this article is to present documentary material to illustrate and comment on de Coninck's ideas on literature, language and society. This commentary on ideological and aesthetic opinions can form the basis for further discursive and institutional research with regard to the presence in and the image building of South Africa in the works by a canonized Flemish writer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a short history of Flemish postmodern fiction, from its rise to its current late postmodern developments. In important respects, this history turns out to be different from that of Dutch postmodern fiction, and differences between Flemish and Dutch critical reception are touched on. Three Flemish postmodern novelists are discussed, which leads to a twofold conclusion: Flemish postmodernism has always sought for a critical, experimental narrative form, and in its recent incarnation it tends to embrace a more explicit form of social critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raymond Brulez was een kind van de belle epoque. In 1895 werd hij als jongste zoon van een Blankenbergse gemeentesecretaris geboren in het hotel-pension van zijn moeder - Maison Brulez-D'Hondt werd het 'huis te Borgen' in zijn boeken. Na de voortijdige dood van vader Brulez in 1906 verhuisde hetgezin naar Watermaal b~j Brussel. In de Vlaamse literatuur van het interbellum maakte Raymond Brulez naam met de korte roman André Terval. Inleiding tot een leven van gelijkmoedigheid (1930) en de verhalenbundel Sheherazade of Literatuur als losprijs (1932). Zijn hoofdwerk is de vierdelige cyclus Mijn woningen (1950-1955), waarvan het eerste deel, Het huis te Borgen, in 1951 werd bekroond met de Staatsprijs voor verhalend proza. Mijn woningen is meer dan een geromantiseerde autobiografie. Naar aanleiding van de heruitgave in één boekdeel (1997) noemde Ben no Barnard de cyclus: `Meer dan wat ook het belangrijkste, bet rouwbaarste en ontroerendste ooggetuigenverslag van de eerste heift van de twintigste eeuw in Vlacinderen.' Meer dan dankbaar materiaal voor biogra af loris van Parys om na zijn boeken over de anarchistische wereldverbeteraar Frans Masereel en de onafhankelijke liberaal Cyriel Buysse3, het levensverhaal van de niet minder vrijmoedige scepticus Raymond Brulez, de 'Vlaarnse Voltaire', te reconstrueren, als sluitstuk van een triptiek die de grenzen tussen literaire biografie en cultuurgeschiedenis verschuift.4 Deze bijdrage is een voorstudie voor de eerste hoofdstukken van die biografie. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the stylistic diversity of conversations in medieval narrative literature is discussed, based on an analysis of a corpus of medieval Flemish romances, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The conversations in the works investigated will be approached from a comparative perspective on three different areas. First, several formal features of conversations are analyzed, such as the use of long and short clauses. Second, the different conversational tones of dialogues are described: different tonalities, such as an extremely courteous tone, an outspoken tone, and a rude mode, will be discussed. Finally, the use of colloquial speech is analyzed, as can be experienced in the beast epic Van den vos Reynaerde. This article concludes with a discussion of the influence of both the performance and the authorship of Flemish romances on the diverse stylization of conversations in these works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subjugated to the linguistic and literary norms of the Netherlands and, at the same time, confined to the borders of the multilingual state of Belgium, Flemish authors have always had to struggle hard to legitimize their cultural identity. After the Second World War, however, Flemish literature suffered from an existential crisis due to the fact that a small but prominent part of the Flemish Movement had collaborated with the German occupiers. Publishers therefore had to explore new ways in which to turn Flemish literature into a commercially and artistically successful commodity in Flanders and the Netherlands. Introducing a theoretical framework that was conceived of by Pierre Bourdieu and further elaborated on by Pascale Casanova in The World Republic of Letters, this article will discuss and interpret the ways in which Flemish publishers have edited, designed, and marketed literary texts, and explore the positive and negative effects which strategies of assimilation and differentiation have had on the reception of those texts. The reading practices engaged in by literary gatekeepers, both in Belgium and in the Netherlands, are shown to have been a profoundly influential force in the history of Flemish literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Kierkegaard's encounter with medieval Rhineland- Flemish mysticism, with continual reference to Kierkegaard's overall reception of mysticism. This case study attempts to elucidate - in the form of pars pro toto - that a deeper understanding of Kierkegaard's reception of mysticism inevitably requires thorough analysis of his relation to concrete historical figures known as mystics. After an outline of Kierkegaard's early criticism of mysticism and its background, the article goes on to explore the picture of Rhineland-Flemish mysticism in Kierkegaard's secondary sources. Subsequently, it examines Kierkegaard's own references to the German and Dutch mystics and his usage of their texts, seeing these in close connection with the motifs found in the secondary literature read by Kierkegaard. In conclusion, the findings pertaining to Kierkegaard's reception of the Rhineland-Flemish mystics are compared to Marie Mikulov' Thulstrup's theses concerning Kierkegaard's relationship with mysticism in general. It is also suggested that what attracted Kierkegaard's attention the most in Rhineland-Flemish mysticism was, in fact, its least mystical part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While neighbouring regions boast more established traditions of Euro-African creative writing, Flanders, Belgium's Dutch-speaking region, has only just begun to see publications by authors of African origin. The author endeavours to account for this relatively late emergence of Flemish-African writing by examining the publishing circumstances in Flanders. While mainly non-fiction was published initially, recently established writing contests and short-story collections dedicated to new talent are encouraging 'new Flemings', especially young women of Moroccan descent, to venture onto the Flemish literary scene. Special attention is paid to the milestone event of the 2005 publication of Chika Unigwe's De Feniks, the first book-length work of fiction by an African author in Flanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the correlation between the gender of authors and the winners of literary awards in Flanders in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The hypothesis is that the chances of winning such an award are different for male and female writers. The article will investigate the reasons for this imbalance. The authors look at the impact the gender of the authors seems to have and at the gender of the judges. The article will answer questions such as: Are female authors treated unfairly by the Flemish literary system? Does an all-male jury favour male candidates? Do men write "better" books? Yet the article will also consider the professionalism of female authors: are they somehow to blame for the imbalance? Do they enter competitions as fervently as male authors? Are they willing to promote themselves and create the necessary networks? Finally, the article will investigate whether there is a difference between the literary genres: are female writers of children's books more likely to win an award than their female colleagues writing for adults? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution I explore the perspectives Mikhail Bakhtin's chronotope concept offers for the study of the intrinsically hybrid genre of the historical novel. By applying the concept to the analysis of the early 19th-century Flemish historical novel, I illustrate how the chronotope of the adventure novel of ordeal, which structures a significant number of the historical novels published in Belgium between 1830 and 1850, and which can be traced back to ancient Greek romance, can undergo drastic revisions under the influence of the particular poetics of the Belgian historical novel. During the first two decades of Belgian independence the poetics of the genre was strongly determined by the nationalist and didactic function the historical novel was called upon to perform. On the basis of an analysis of the historical adventure novel Arnold van Schoorisse (1845) by Joseph Ronsse -- after Hendrik Conscience the second author to practise the genre in Flanders -- I will illustrate how the first Flemish novelists harked back to traditional chronotopes (and their corresponding plots and motives) with which the largely uneducated Flemish public was familiar from a mostly oral folk tradition, and tried to remould these to accord with their own purposes and with the demands and regulations of the genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federalisation of Belgium has been gaining momentum since 1970. Flanders in particular has presented itself as a self-confident area claiming autonomy and a coherent identity. On the one hand the difference between Flanders and its neighbours is stressed and on the other hand an internal cohesion is proclaimed. Flanders seems to be obsessed with the concept and the reality of 'border' and has an intense awareness of 'space'. Flemish identity is narrativized into a Flemish tale, or rather the Flemish tale. It is a Bildungsgeschichte in which the main character is a 'we' (as opposed to 'the others') and the motifs are language, history, peculiarity, struggle etc. Together with this political discourse (narrative), a particular literary genre has boomed in Flemish literature: so called roots-literature in which a search is undertaken towards one's descent and/or origin. In Flemish and especially in Dutch literary criticism this genre is considered to be 'typically Flemish', which suggests that the genre contributes to the construction of a Flemish identity. Yet, the confrontation with about a hundred novels from a very heterogeneous group of authors (from Hugo Claus, to Walter van den Broeck, Leo Pleysier and Stefan Hertmans) shows us a very different picture. A closer look reveals indeed that Flemish roots-literature deconstructs the ideas of cohesion, autonomy and origin. Flemish identity is exposed and dismantled, the concept of space is criticized (be it Belgium, Flanders or a specific region or village) and the 'borders' are questioned. The literary narrative undermines the political narrative instead of being a docile illustration of it. This shows an important discrepancy between political and literary discourse. It also shows how a quest for roots leads to the pursuit of rootlessness. Flemish literature resists the ideas of cohesion and harmony that is being forced upon it. A typically Flemish trait perhaps? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some aspects of 'cynicism' in twentieth-century Dutch literature. Different uses of the concept in the critical reception of Willem Elsschot are analyzed and placed in the wider context of literature and literary criticism in Dutch during the interwar period and the Second World War. Against this backdrop, Willy van Cauwenberg's essay Het Cynisme in de moderne Vlaamsche Letteren (Cynicism in Modern Flemish Letters, 1942) and John Hendriks's novel Huwelijk zonder Kinderen (Marriage Without Children, 1941) are dealt with in two concise case-studies. By way of conclusion, three areas for further research are briefly presented: Elsschot's significance for a younger generation of writers, the role of 'cynicism' in interwar and Second World War literature, and its lasting presence in the post-war era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]