Abstrakt
In both England and Bohemia, the fourteenth century saw the rise of more or less comprehensive accounts of national history produced in the 'popular' vernaculars: English and Czech. While the Czech side offers a single specimen, the highly influential metrical Chronicle of the So-called Dalimil, the English material comprises a number of metrical and prose chronicles.
In attempting to shape the national past into a coherent narrative relevant for the present moment, the author of the Czech chronicle faced a task different from that of his English fellow-writers. They had to accommodate the successive waves of invasions and lay claim to the famous exploits of British kings and their link with the classical antiquity, while still maintaining that it all belongs to the 'English story'.
By contrast, Czech history was relatively homogeneous in ethnic terms - Czech through and through - but less promising as an account of a glorious past. Despite this basic difference, the texts show similar tendencies in their ʽwriting of historyʼ.
They project a strong vision of the ʽnationalʼ community through an opposition with some historical ʽotherʼ (Norman French, Scots, Germans). This basic scheme is subjected to various strategic adjustments, partly depending on the political stance of individual authors, partly resulting from their writing of history from the vantage point of the present, whether this takes the form of a teleological fashioning of the account or the highlighting of the exemplary character of specific events.
Rather than producing a unified image of the past, however, such an approach makes these seemingly coherent accounts rife with tensions.