From Political Biography to Political Event: The Daens Myth in Literature in Cinema

This article examines how Louis Paul Boon's historical novel Pieter Daens (1971) and Stijn Coninx's biopic Daens (1992) have contributed to the "Daens myth," in which the Belgian priest and politician Adolf Daens is idealized as a self-assured hero fighting social injustice. The article focuses on how Daens is related to Flemish nation-building and how the political biopic became a political event itself.