Het verdriet als legkaart. Vlaamse stereotypen in de Italiaanse vertaling

Het verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium), Hugo Claus’ masterpiece, offers the international community of readers, through its many translations, a fragmented image of the Flemish people during World War II. This contemporary and experimental Bildungsroman by the Flemish writer abounds in ironic allusions and distortions in its depiction of the Flemish provincial petty bourgeoisie and its reactions to the German occupation. This chapter will adopt some imagological research tools to analyse the frequent ethnotypes (stereotypical attributions of national character, according to Leerssen, 2016, p.13) employed by Claus in this novel and find out how they possibly met the expectations of Italian readers, also shaped by the Italian reviewers of the book (Augias, 2000; Dotti, 2016). With the help of historical studies on Flemish collaborationism and its legacy (Beyen, 2002; Lensen, 2014) and on the Fascist propaganda before and during World War II (among others, Sciola, 2001; Siennicka, 2015; Winterhalter, 2010), and by comparing excerpts from the original and the Italian translation (La sofferenza del Belgio, translation by G. Errico; Claus, 1999), this analysis illustrates how ethnotypes playing a role in Claus’ novel function in its Italian translation.