Clément Dessy examines the Anglophilia of literary and artistic symbolist groups in Brussels.
Between 1880 and 1930, Belgium and Brussels began to be perceived as places where cosmopolitanism could take root. This paper analyses the Anglophile attitude of Belgian literary and artistic avant-gardes. Belgian symbolists targeted both Paris and London in order to lift Brussels from its status of a second-level cultural capital to the level of the French and British metropoles.