Willy Vandersteens Blauwe collectie en La collection bleue : een vergelijkend, intra-Belgisch onderzoek naar vertaling en sociale klassen

Details

Supervisors

Vanasten, Stéphanie ; Sirjacobs, Timothy

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation germaniques, à finalité spécialisée: langues des affaires

Abstract

enFrom September 1948 to April 1959, Willy Vandersteen published eight original Suske and Wiske storylines for the weekly comics magazine Tintin and its Flemish equivalent Kuifje. He aimed to make a reputation in French-speaking Belgium as well as in France. However, the author had to adjust his dialogues and pencil stroke to meet the demands of artistic director Hergé in order to attract part of the magazine's target audience. This group of readers is defined as a 'classe-loisir', the social class of the 1950s who could afford leisure activities. The central question is how these stories - considered Vandersteen's masterpieces by experts - were created for a bourgeois French-speaking audience that valued a highbrow culture. In order to answer this question three angles will be investigated: the adaptation and/or disappearance of a number of characters, the cultural realia (historical events, literary references, geographical areas, and so forth) as well as the French translation. On this last point, particular attention will be devoted to spelling mistakes, language errors, and typos in both the blue and classic red series. The aim of this master's thesis is to examine the change in social classes in the blue series where the visibility of the bourgeois culture contrasts with the growing invisibility of a more popular one.