Belgium

Victorian culture in Belgium and abroad

Belgium is linguistically divided into a Dutch speaking North and a French speaking South. Each part has its own universities: Flemishor Dutch speaking students will go to Ghent University, the Catholic University of Leuven, the University of Antwerp, the University of Limburg or the Free University of Brussels. French speaking students can opt for the Universities of Liège or Namur, the French speaking Free University of Brussels and the French speaking Catholic University of Louvain.

Most of the research on Victorian culture is conducted in the North but some extremely valuable though not easily traceable research on the Pre-Raphaelites is being done by, for instance, Laurence Brogniez of the University of Namur. Brogniez' work, written in French and little known abroad, allows me to highlight an advantage of the Flemish researchers. University policy and the Flemish openness towards and eagerness to learn foreign languages effectively created a tradition in the humanities which expected academics to teach and to publish in the language of the culture they were studying.¹ Researchers attached to English departments are expected to publish in English and aim for the best, internationally renowned journals. At the University of Ghent, publications published abroad and listed in well-known indexes such as the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, are valued much more highly than articles published in national journals. Supervisors of PhDs are financially rewarded if their students publish their research results in those journals or have their PhD published by an academic inter-national publisher. Peer review is crucial in all of this.

The French speaking universities, on the other hand, very muchlike their French colleagues, tend to publish their research results in French even though they deal, for instance, with British culture. In France this is even taken one step further with French PhDs on British or North-American subjects being entirely written in French. The French Victorianists, as will no doubt be explained in the survey article on Victorian culture in France, have a strong Victorian culture research tradition with a good network (the SFEVE), some eminent researchers and their own journal(s) (Cahiers d'Etudes Victoriens et Edouardiens) but their writings and findings are unlikely to be read by British or American colleagues working in the same field. Unfortunately, this works the other way round as well, with French researchers often referring to French articles and books even where the more obvious, ground breaking or seminal (and earlier) publications are in English.

I am less familiar with the situation in other European countrieswith regard to their work on Victorian culture. The little I knowabout Italian, Spanish or Portuguese Universities seems to indicate that there, as in France, the language in which English culture is taughtis the national language, and often even primary sources are read in translation.

My participation in conferences abroad has not led on my part to fruitful contacts with colleagues of Southern European countries or Northern continental European countries for that matter, with thesole exception of the Netherlands. I have collaborated on several occasions with researchers associated with the Radboud University of Nijmegen, Frans Korsten, Jos Blom and Odin Dekkers. Together we were responsible for the Minor Prose authors section in the Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. And of course, through my research on the weekly Athenaeum, I have come to know and rely on the workof Monica Fryckstedt, one of the few continental Europeans to be a member of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.

A more intensive exchange of research findings among academics across the ocean and across the channel seems to be hampered first and foremost by the lack of a common forum language and a cultural divide. But the second reason for the at times rueful ignorance (or professed ignorance) of what is happening elsewhere results from the rather stark individualism of the researcher in Victorian culture. Consequently and quite ironically, academics need to be encouraged to collaborate by national and trans-national funding bodies offering grants if they network or engage in teamwork. Thus the Flemish Research council is more inclined to award a grant to a project proposal submitted by...