On another hand, for Gustave Charlier, who was first to enunciate the theoretical paradigm based on language, there was no unitary Belgian literature whose French and Flemish expressions could be considered panels of a diptych. In 1938, he took note of the existence of a “literature that is developing in a language it shares with another country” – namely France. Regarding this “second literature” (the concept is not derogatory), he thought that it carried “the weight of the literary tradition belonging to the language it employs.” Standing opposed to this somewhat restrictive concept, Joseph Hanse took a larger view in 1964: “The linguistic community [...] creates a unity that is more real than belonging to the nation.” According to him, it was appropriate to “speak of French literature, and of the French literature of Belgium”. This acceptance of a single cultural space or civilization appears again in 1968 with Maurice Piron and “literary francophony,” a notion that had only emerged, but to which he gave real theoretical consistency – as he did to the notion of “marginal literatures” (of Belgium, Romandy (the part of Switzerland also known as “Suisse Romande”) and French Canada). Speaking of these, he said, “the hour has finally arrived [...] to affirm their vocation.”
 
In 1980 Marc Quaghebeur announced a resolutely ideological turn. In Belgium there was an enormous complex of societal predispositions that distorted the relationship between literature and the context of its production, to the point where Quaghebeur remarked that “the absence of rigor unfortunately affects our literary manuals, and ideology seems quite definitely to be considered more important than cognitive quality.” This state of affairs gave rise to equally unfortunate cases of manipulation in which regional interests, especially those that favoured Walloon literature of the literature of the Brussels region, were obviously at work.  Despite this he was able to hope that “Belgian letters in the French language constitute [...] an exceptional field of investigation for anyone who can accept, without blinkers or clichés, the task of rethinking the status of writing as influenced by language, history and culture.” This challenge was accepted by Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, who made use of historical sociology. In 1981, well aware that literature was more the result of opposing forces than a disembodied process of creation, he introduced a “gravitational model” intended to clarify the strategies of literatures at the periphery: the centrifugal phase (1830-1920) of independence from Paris; the centripetal phase (1920-1960) of rapprochement with Paris; the dialectical phase (beginning in 1960), a synthesis of nationalist leanings and their “nationless” antithesis. (2). The ultimate goal of the Belgian writer, and the test of a writer’s quest for legitimacy, was still considered to be “getting published and recognized in Paris.” Finally, José Lambert said in 1983 that the notion of “national literatures” needed to be re-examined, and he questioned whether there really were boundaries between literatures of a political or even a linguistic nature. Thus he held it to be necessary to establish a really effective system of explanation that would be able to furnish us with “a key that will allow us to characterize the so-called national literatures as well as the vicissitudes to which they appear to be subject.”

(2) Here we present the revised names for these phases that are used in our text generally, and not those from the original 1981 text that is in fact included in the anthology.