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History of civilization --- identity --- cultuurgeschiedenis --- Pulings, Gaston --- anno 1920-1929 --- anno 1930-1939 --- Belgium

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This book sets the grounds for a new approach exploring cultural mediators as key figures in literary and cultural history. It proposes an innovative conceptual and methodological understanding of the figure of the cultural mediator, defined as a cultural actor active across linguistic, cultural and geographical borders, occupying strategic positions within large networks and being the carrier of cultural transfer. Many studies on translation and cultural mediation privileged the major metropolis of Paris, London, and New York as centres of cultural production and translation. However, other cities and megacities that are not global centres of culture also feature vibrant translation scenes. This book abandons the focus on ‘innovative’ centres and ‘imitative’ peripheries and follows processes of cultural exchange as they develop. Thus, it analyses the role of cultural mediators as customs officers or smugglers (or both in different proportions) in so-called ‘peripheral’ cultures and offers insights into an under-analysed body of actors and institutions promoting intercultural transfer in often multilingual and less studied venues such as Trieste, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Lima, Lahore, or Cape Town.

Theory of literary translation --- Sociology of literature

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Abstract This research examines the busy intersection between ideology and literature and aspires to take a social perspective on it. The starting question is if narratological models are sufficiently equipped to account for specific cases of censorship. This question is explored on the basis of the analysis of censored fragments from the book Erfolg: Drei Jahre Geschichte einer Provinz of the German writer Lion Feuchtwanger. Concretely, the censored fragments are retrieved and their narratological features are closely examined. This micro-analysis of censorship is contrasted with the modalities of the narratological techniques employed in this study and unveils ultimately the discrepancies that exist between the two approaches. These discrepancies are looked at from a theoretical point of view and are connected to intrinsic properties that are resulting from a complex and dynamic modeling of ideology. At the same time the discussion takes a critical stance towards the narratological models and their way of analyzing ideology, pleading for a more diverse understanding of ‘ideology’ in the realm of literary texts.

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In this master’s thesis, the reception of recent Scandinavian literature in the Netherlands as well as in Flanders is examined. The goal was to point out how popular Swedish, Norwegian and Danish literature in Dutch translation is in the Dutch-speaking areas, and which literature (Swedish, Norwegian or Danish) has preference above the others. The main focus points of this research were the translation of Scandinavian books and flows to Flanders and the Netherlands, book sales rates, the position of the Swedish, Danish and Norwegian literary markets in a broader international context, the genre of the Nordic Noir and the reception of specific bestselling authors and their bestselling books. This research paper is based on Johan Heilbron’s previous studies on the translations and international flows of books, written down in Translation as a Cultural World System and published in 2000. As is also the case in Heilbron’s research, one of the main databases used for this master’s thesis is the Index Translationum by UNESCO, which lists (almost) all the books translated in the world. Besides that, Boek.be vzw and Stichting Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek (both in collaboration with GfK) provide a database with all the bestselling books from the last few years, which were also very useful. Other main sources were Barry Forshaw’s Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film & TV, published in 2013, Pascale Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters, originally published in 1999 and Gisèle Sapiro’s Globalization and cultural diversity in the book market: The case of literary translations in the US and in France, written in 2010. One of the main conclusions was the stable, longstanding main position of Swedish literature in the Netherlands and Flanders compared to Danish and Norwegian literature. Swedish, as a semi-peripheral language, has a fairly bigger international position on the literary market than Danish and Norwegian, which are both peripheral languages. Different economic, geographical as well as political sources are the cause of this situation. Another conclusion was the determination of the bestselling Scandinavian authors in recent years: Swedish Stieg Larsson, Lars Kepler and Jonas Jonasson, Danish Jussi Adler-Olsen and Norwegian Jo Nesbø. All of them wrote Nordic Noir books, except for one: Jonasson. His novel, The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, has a unique position on the market by being the only recent non-Nordic Noir book which still managed to be a bestseller in both the Netherlands and Flanders for multiple years in a row. Other of the bestselling titles are Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, Adler-Olsen’s Department Q books and Kepler’s Stalker. The main thing that all of the Scandinavian writers have in common is the fact that they write about what they think is wrong with (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian as well as international) society. More research in the future will be useful to further look into the translation flows from Scandinavia tot the Netherlands and Flanders and see how they evolve. This thesis can, however, be a useful guide to look into the situation in 2016.

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Gebaseerd op de theorie van Even-Zohar, stellen we in het eerste deel van deze thesis het concept van het westers literair systeem voor. Dit relatief onafhankelijk systeem wordt gekenmerkt door een hiërarchische structuur. Enerzijds heeft men het centrum, een term waarmee we verwijzen naar de inhoudelijke en vormelijke literaire kenmerken die op een bepaald moment toonaangevend zijn, anderzijds is er de periferie, waarin de literaire kenmerken die geen aanzien genieten, zich bevinden. Zoals voorgaande zin reeds suggereert, is de positie die deze kenmerken binnen het systeem bekleden niet definitief; er heerst immers een voortdurende strijd om dominantie. Om een realistische kans te maken tot in het centrum van het literair systeem door te dringen moet een aantal voorwaarden vervuld zijn. Een eerste voorwaarde is de (weliswaar relatieve) onafhankelijkheid van de literaire wereld ten opzichte van de politieke autoriteiten. Ook welvaart bevordert een hoogstaande literatuur en cultuur. Een derde belangrijk element met het oog op de verovering van de centrale positie binnen het literair systeem is de verzameling kennis en vaardigheden die een (nationale) literatuur heeft opgebouwd doorheen de geschiedenis. Hoewel dit westers literair systeem in principe een Europese aangelegenheid is (Europa voldoet sinds enkele eeuwen aan de bovenstaande vereisten), werd ook Zuid-Amerika er omwille van het koloniaal verleden bij betrokken. In het tweede deel analyseren we hoe het de Peruviaanse prozaschrijvers tussen 1920 en 1970 is vergaan in een omgeving die, in tegenstelling tot de Europese, allesbehalve gunstig was voor de ontwikkeling van hoogstaande literatuur. In een eerste fase verhinderden de extraliteraire omstandigheden de totstandkoming van een literatuur die kon meestrijden voor de toonaangevende positie binnen het westers literair systeem. Vanaf de tweede helft van de 20ste eeuw echter, werd in heel Zuid-Amerika de samenleving een bron van inspiratie die, samen met een paar andere factoren, zou leiden tot het magisch realisme. Deze literaire stroming, waarvan de Peruviaan Mario Vargas Llosa een van de belangrijkste vertegenwoordigers is, beantwoordde perfect aan de literaire smaak van de (Europese) modernistische lezer. Uit deze thesis zal evenwel blijken dat de bloeiperiode van het Peruviaans proza helaas geen structurele oorzaak kende en eerder het gevolg was van een samenloop van omstandigheden en het genie van Llosa.