ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals and explores an artistic culture which produces, as a rule, the unclassifiable. This cultural tradition is made up of writers and artists apparently unrelated to any tradition, but who nonetheless belong together. The chapter presents Belgian artistic culture from the 1890s to the 1940s. It does not deal solely with literary practices, but, in a way that mirrors the extensive collaborations between arts so characteristic of that period's cultural terrain, it also deals with music, painting and photography, as well as politics, culture and popular art forms. Patrick McGuinness examines the theme of doubleness and reflection in Belgian Symbolism, connecting these to the double nature of Belgian culture, and further to the relationship of mirroring and doubling that characterises the ties between French and Belgian literary cultures. Pierre-Philippe Fraiture focuses on an underrepresented area: Belgian colonial fiction.
