The choice of variables and the establishment of relational capital

Once the theoretical and methodological framework has been well established, the second half of the book is mainly divide up into two large chapters. The first is devoted to the indicators linked to the agents’ profiles, whilst the second dwells on the capital of these agents.

The indicators are so many variables which enable a categorisation of authors who are otherwise integrated into a corpus which is too large and heterogeneous to be processed statistically. First of all, after having classified them according to age, the researcher drew up for each writer the social indicators, in other words their educational studies, professions, the social origins and geographical origins of each one, before correlating them. He thus drew up a series of measurable categories which he could compare. He then moved onto the categorisation of literary indicators and to their symbolic impact. He classified the authors according to the genre they used (poetry, novel, short story, essay, etc.), the publishing houses which brought out their works (French, Belgian, Franco-Belgian, established or modest, etc.), any possible literary prizes they may have won, and the social spaces frequented. He distinguishes several of these spaces, in other words salons, groups, manifestos, literary societies and, finally, the journals. A titanic and meticulous task which has allowed him, after analysis and interpretation, to bring out a large number of standard profiles and relationships between different agents, before offering a short qualitative study extending the observation of the positioning of certain writers and justifying the value of this enlightening methodology.

The final chapter, based on measurements and interpretations carried by the establishment and study of indicators, establishes and categorises the different capital the authors had according to their social and professional trajectory. Björn-Olav Dozo thus first of all deals with relational capital, based on the existence of a relationship with other agents depending on their frequenting a social space. He then moves onto the establishment of social capital, based on each writer’s profession and social origins, few of them really making a living from their pen, then to social capital, which for its part takes in education, professions and hobbies, and finally symbolic capital, which will be lesser or higher depending on the genre practiced, the importance of the publishing house which brings out a work, or literary prizes won. The end of the chapter is devote to a correlation between these capitals, which permits the establishing of the social trajectories and the standard profiles of writers depending on these backgrounds and their characteristics.

The book thus offers the establishment of several standard profiles of writers in francophone Belgium in the interwar period, brings to light certain forms of autonomy of a genuine sub-field (that of francophone Belgian literature, which is inscribed in the larger field which is francophone literature, but which has its own mode of functioning, its own institutions, etc.), sets out the power relationships which stem from Belgian production and its greater or lesser independence from France. It finally enables an objective understanding of the importance of networks and relationships in the establishment of other capitals and offers a future opening to more qualitative studies which could take into account these advances in knowledge.

Two examples of valuable advantages

Amongst the numerous enlightenments offered by this work, two amongst them still deserve to be cited: the figure of an animator of literary life and the concept of a socio-literary generation.

The first, the figure of an animator of literary life, existed intuitively in people’s consciousnesses. But the exhaustive and objective study of the corpus has enabled the bringing to light and above the underlining of their mechanisms and their importance in the literary network. It concerns people, more or less well known writers, who through their belonging to numerous social spaces are at the centre of relationships. They are so many bridges between people or groups which, without the animator’s presence, would remain impermeable to each other. They permit encounters, new synergies and the crystallisation and nexus of the literary network. ‘We indeed suspected that there existed people who had played an important role in literary life,’ relativises the researcher. ‘But we had never succeeded in objectifying their position, to pick them out. The analysis of networks was a magnificent opportunity to outline these profiles.’