In 1830, Belgian publishing depended largely on French and, to a lesser extent, Netherlandic imports. French novels (by Dumas, Stendhal, Janin), French collections of poetry (by Hugo, Lamartine, Musset), even entire French journals such as the Revue de Paris and the Revue des deux mondes were reprinted in pirate editions by Belgian publishers such as J.P. Meline, Cans, and Ad. Wahlen. While this situation lasted (it came to an end in 1850, when a French-Belgian copyright treaty was signed), this foreign orientation and dependency stifled a homegrown literary productivity; but publishing know-how flourished and maintained itself after 1850; major French writers (Hugo, Mallarmé) published some of their important works with Belgian publishers.

Belgian journals constitute a microcosm of Belgian cultural and literary life, bringing together, over an extended period of time, a considerable number of authors and critics, and combining discursive practices including literary-poetical genres, critical essays, reviews, etc. As a consequence, journals give access to the major discursive modalities by which literature took on a shape and a function.

It is noteworthy that, while the idea of a national union was a powerful driving force within Belgian culture, there were no bilingual journals. Whether produced either in Flemish or French, each was supposed to echo the cultural and literary production within the other language. As to the representation of Flemish language and culture in Francophone Belgian journals, four modalities can be distinguished: Flemish authors writing in French; translations of Flemish texts; critical analyses and reviews; and the embedding of Flemish-language elements in Francophone texts.

A comparison of translation and reviewing policies in the two leading Francophone periodicals illustrates the nature and development of the relation between the two literary subsystems. The tellingly-named Revue de Belgique (1869-90) set out to contribute to the construction of a single national literature. The other, La jeune Belgique, founded in 1881, concentrated on literary and artistic life within Francophone Belgium. Loyal to its motto, Soyons-nous (“Let us be”), it endorsed an originally Belgian literature, which would break openly with the lingering tradition of Romanticism. The journal folded in 1898.

Strikingly, while the Revue de Belgique (whose coverage of literary translations from all languages amounts to no more than 12.5% of its total text-space) offers reasonably substantial accounts of Flemish literature, mainly through translations and reviews, La jeune Belgique (which only devotes 3.1% of its text-space to translations) neither translates nor reviews Flemish texts. The representation of Flanders seems to express a dual strategy: to present a filtered image, mediated and harmless, and to divest the Flemish/Netherlandic language of its role as carrier and medium of expression of this Belgian-Flemish culture. Between them, these two strategies provide a model for integrating Flemish culture into Francophone Belgium, where the French language and French writing control the means of cultural representation and reproduction. Without being foreign, Flemish exoticism is what makes Belgian culture special. It is by this very partial mode of cross-cultural hybridization that Belgian literature has managed to enter foreign literary markets, in the first place the Parisian literary scene. And that, in turn, made it possible, for a long time, to legitimize French-language literature in Belgium as the main, or even the only, “Belgian literature”.