From Belgium to the world and back? The case of Rieder

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the 1920s and the 1930s, a large number of Belgian authors were published by a Parisian publishing house, Rieder & Cie. Most of them wrote directly in French, the others in Dutch and were translated. Thanks to Rieder's international drive, all these works were considered part of a system that prefigured World Literature, where local and global belonging were not in contradiction. The ‘Belges de Rieder' were known in Belgium, France and abroad; they were translated into several languages, and they were in contact with other writers from all over the world - for example in the columns of Europe, the international review that Rieder launched and published. The current situation for these same authors is completely different. Some of them are still being reprinted, but their ‘local' side clearly prevails. A study of the publishing circles involved, now and then, shows that is not (only) a corpus, it is mainly a way of circulating and reading literary texts. Some works can aspire to a ‘world' dimension but they struggle to assert themselves for lack of an adequate system of publication, distribution or even critical reading.