par Paul Aron
19901991, in La Revue des revues no 10
Literary Journals in French-speaking Belgium – Part 1 : 1880-1914.
19th century Belgium saw a flowering of literary journals. Quantitively speaking, their growing number reflected the evolution of intellectual life in general, the increase of schooling, and a significant growth of productive forces. They also revealed the qualitative change which took place around 1880 : from this year on, they became more and more specialised, eventually evolving into purely literary journals. They helped the renaissance of Belgian letters at the end of the century. The leading journal, la Jeune Belgique, gave its name to a cultural movement known from Cracow to Vienna to Paris. At the end of the period under study, though, the « Belgian » dimension tended to fade out and these journals became integrated into the French domain. The article analyses briefly the role and function of the most significant publications.