oa ‘Gij Vlaming die … deze strip bekeken hebt’. De Leeuw van Vlaanderen als stripverhaal

Adaptations confirm the canonical status of a literary text and keep it ‘alive’ by rendering it more accessible for a new generation of readers. These ‘rewritings’ are, however, also influenced by their specific contemporary context.

A text that has stimulated manifold adaptations is De Leeuw van Vlaenderen by Hendrik Conscience (1838), which was not only translated into other languages, made into a movie, adapted for young readers and for theatre, but also – and even several times - turned into a comic strip. Between 1934 and 1994, no less than nine different comic adaptations were published, five of which appeared as album. This wide variety can be explained by different functions and different target audiences of the various comic adaptations.

This article investigates the functions of these comics and the adaptation techniques used to achieve these goals. The function will be identified on the basis of various techniques involving the reader into the story. Besides the Flemish nationality of the heroes, the focus is on visual focalization and on references to the contemporary reality of the reader, with the historical and sociocultural context being considered as well.