Emotions and Nation. Making Community, Communion and National Subjects in the Narrative Sources of Brabant and Bohemia (1300–1400)

The Centre for Research on Courts and Residences and the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences cordially invite you to the public lecture by Dr. Éloïse Adde "Emotions and Nation. Making Community, Communion and National Subjects in the Narrative Sources of Brabant and Bohemia (1300–1400)". The lecture will be streamed via Zoom on Thursday, April 7, 2022 at 2.00 p.m.

Invitation

At the beginning of the 14th century, Bohemia and Brabant developed both a significant sense of the nation, albeit with different intensity and values due to the dissimilar socio-political contexts. In both countries, a succession crisis had weakened the authority of the ruler (extinction of the Přemyslide dynasty in 1306 in Bohemia, the minority of John III of Brabant after the death of John II in 1312), the two groups which had become the dominant political forces during the 13th century, the Czech nobility and the Brabantine bourgeoisie, managed to seize political control for several decades. To consolidate their position, they both developed a new vernacular literature, respectively in Czech and in Dutch, through which they shaped the idea of a nation that suited their enterprise, presenting themselves as the only group able to protect their country. The traditional argument defines the nation as a pre-political construct, a community that sees itself as the bearer of a common past and with a clear vocation towards the self-government. Any national project that arises from this transmission tends to an imbalance between the emotional and the rational. Considering the nation as a phenomenon both collective and individual, the main objective of this lecture will be to precisely examine this emotional dimension and the to-and-fro between the aspirations of individuals and the strategies developed by those who governed them. More broadly, through the concrete examples of Brabant and Bohemia, it will try to understand how the idea of nation appeared, why it became a “fundamental political factor” at the end of the Middle Ages, having so much success among the populations and political instances.

RSVP to sekretariat@hiu.cas.cz