Constant Malva et ses modèles : une lecture de Borins

This paper aims to place the Belgian writer Constant Malva in a broader literary context than that of proletarian literature or mine literature, to which he is almost exclusively associated. The author has several models at his disposal to write about mining, labour and the proletariat; Malva inherits, among other things, and more clearly than one would suspect, the model of the accounts of the First World War, which had established themselves - with the Barbussian Fire in mind - as the great realistic model of the inter-war period. On the basis of these analyses, this article proposes a new way of reading Malva's works, with a special focus on Borins (1937), who presents several analogies with Le Feu.