The Hybridization of Flemish Identity: The Flemish National Heritage on the Contemporary Stage

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Notes

1. Eric Corijn and Eefje Vloeberghs, Brussel! (Brussels: VUBPress, 2009), p. 32.

2. Jan Baetens, Mieke Bleyen, Hilde Van Gelder, ‘Ya-t-il une photographie ‘‘belge''', Contemporary French Civilization, vol. 33, issue 1, pp. 157–177 (157). All translations from the Flemish and French are my own.

3. For this article, I have revisited my reflections in ‘Le patrimoine flamingant sur la scène flamande contemporaine. Reconstruction ou deconstruction identitaire?’ (in ‘Mémoires de l'oubli. Aux marges du repertoire de l'Antiquitéà nos jours’, Etudes Théâtrales, 44–45 (2009), 159–68). I would like to thank the editors of the present volume, Lourdes Orozco and Peter M. Boenisch, for their useful comments.

4. For French historian Pierre Nora, a lieu de mémoire can take the form of a monument, an artefact, an archive, a person, a symbol, or an event; it can be material or immaterial. It triggers emotional responses for a specific community, whether these feelings are positive (as with the French Revolution) or negative (e.g. the war in Algeria). See Pierre Nora (ed.), Les lieux de mémoire, 3 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1993).

5. During the Brugse metten [Bruges Mornings] of 1302, the question ‘shield or friend’ was used to distinguish the native supporters of the Flemish count from their French-speaking enemy, who pronounced the Flemish word ‘schild’ as ‘skilt’.

6. The Flemish movement, and with it the ambitions to develop a Dutch-language theatrical canon, has from the beginning been connected with a programme of ethical-bourgeois education: bourgeois virtues and common decency were perceived as a core aspect of the ‘Flemish spirit’, in contrast to the alleged decadence of the French-speaking classes. A key role in this context was played by Oscar de Gruyter, who propagated the use of the Dutch language as an instrument for popular education, and whose influence was felt in Flanders until the 1950s. In 1909 de Gruyter founded the Vlaamsche Vereeniging voor Toneel- en voordrachtkunst (Flemish Association for Theatre and Declamation), bringing classic repertoire pieces to cities and villages in Flanders, often in open-air locations that were easily accessible for a wide public. He was then also the driving force behind the VVT. After de Gruyter's departure in 1924, the organization, under its new artistic leader Johan De Meester, reoriented its militancy towards Catholicism.

7. See Geert Opsomer, ‘Het Vlaamsche volkstoneel en de opvoeringen van Lucifer en Tijl in Parijs’, in Een theatergeschiedenis der Nederlanden. Tien eeuwen drama en theater in Nederland en Vlaanderen ed. by Rob L. Erenstein e.a. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), pp. 626–31.

8. Frank Peeters, ‘Toneel', in Encyclopedia van de Vlaamse Beweging, ed. by Reginald de Schryver e.a. (Tielt: Lannoo, 1998), p. 3090.

9. Riek Swarte et al., Oom Toon, script, Brussels, 2007 (unpublished).

10. Bernard Van Causenbroeck, ‘Velde, Anton van de’, in Encyclopedie van de Vlaamse Beweging, pp. 3177–78 (p. 3177).

11. Jos De Mul, ‘Tragische technologieën’, in Tragisch. Over tragedie en ethiek in de 21^ste eeuw, ed. by Paul Vanden Berghe, Willem Lemmens and Johan Taels (Budel: Damon, 2005), pp. 87–117. De Mul himself took his prompt from T. C. W. Oudemans and A. P. H. Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity: Anthropology, Philosophy and Sophocles' Antigone (Leiden: Brill, 1987).

12. De Mul, ‘Tragische technologieën’, p. 93.

13. After the war, the festival focused on the concrete moot points of the Flemish movement, such as amnesty, federalism and the founding of a Dutch-speaking university in Leuven. Later on, it included broader themes linked to cultural policy, such as the exportation of Flemish culture and art abroad through the establishment of the – at that time – heavily contested ‘Cultural Ambassadors of Flanders’. In its final years, dances and texts of Flemish poets were inserted amongst the songs.