Raymundus Joannes Maria De Kremer, best-known under the pseudonym of Jean Ray, was one of the most important Belgian authors of the first half of the twentieth century. His contribution to literature is immense, both in its volume and in its diversity, stretching well over sixty years of uninterrupted writing. While he wrote mostly short stories of the fantastic genre and adventure novels, he also published detective stories under the pseudonym of John Flanders. A major part of his work was published in newspapers and magazines. Jean Ray was bilingual, which allowed him to write both in French and Flemish, dividing his attention equally between the two. The majority of his writings was published either anonymously or under various pseudonyms. The aim of our thesis is to provide a monograph overview of the said author. The first part situates his work in the context of Belgian literature written in French and the fantastique genre in general. The second part is devoted to his life, with special focus on his literary career. The third part contains analyses of selected parts of his extensive oeuvre. Briefly, we look at the Harry Dickson detective stories. However, the core of our analysis are his fantastic writings, i.e. selected collections of his fantastic short stories and the only fantastic novel...

Univ., Diss.--Frankfurt a.M., 2000.