The Old Czech language in historical fiction: A reflection on a linguistic construct

The goal of this study is to reflect upon the construction and use of the Old Czech language in Czech literary criticism, linguistics, and historical fiction. The usage of Old Czech - as a (re-)constructed language in historical fiction, mostly in characters' speech, is regarded as one of the elements that make fictional characters realistic and evoke the given historical period. Analyses of scholarly texts as well as of fiction have shown that the appearance of Old Czech in characters' speech is not at the centre of the authors' interest. From the literary criticism perspective, the ideas presented in the fiction and the problems of the given historical period are more important than historical language usage. The linguistics texts, if the linguistic aspects of historical fiction arc in their scope, are concentrated predominantly on historical vocabulary usage. Linguists' surprisingly marginal attention to this topic reflects the fact that authors of historical fiction did not use the Old Czech language construct and were not focused on it. If the construct was used, this was not done systematically over the whole text - it was frequently merely one aspect of a game played by the author with the readers (e.g. the imitation of an editor's work with a "mediaeval" manuscript).