Nation–Power–Subjectivity: The Making of National Subjects in Bohemia and Brabant at the Beginning of the Fourteenth Century

This article aims to present my current research on the emergence of the nation in late-medieval Europe by comparing urbanized Brabant and feudal Bohemia (1300-1450). Both entities shared, for a while, the same ruling family and belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. Both were characterised by a strong social group competing with the sovereign and by complex linguistic arrangements with social and political implications. Through a new vernacular literature using respectively Czech and Dutch instead of the more established German and French, they both developed a significant sense of the nation, albeit differently due to distinct socio-political balances and experiences. But, while the Czech nation, as a product of the Czech nobility, was associated with feudal and conservative values, that of Brabant was linked to the urban ideals of political representation and liberty. Concentrating on two authors from the beginning of the fourteenth century, Jan of Boendale and the Pseudo-Dalimil, this article shows that the nation had already become a source of legitimacy in the late medieval power struggles between sovereign and political society.