THE NOTION OF memory is inseparable from its vectors. Memory is an individual experience evoking the workings of the subject's psychology and intellect,1 but it is powered by products of society: specific knowledge and signs and collective or individual experiences dependent on the media making individuals aware of them. We are going to investigate in this comparative research only a part of this, the part concerning the national community or rather, to guard ourselves against any kind of teleological anachronism, political society. There are very many media involved, of course, but one stands out from all the others and that is language, whether spoken or written, either because of the deep structures it reveals or the specific connotations it presents. Not that language is, a priori, the carrier of a national identity: here, too, we must beware of anachronisms. But our sources allow us to know the intended recipient of a written message and therefore have an idea of the strategy of the person giving it, although on the other hand it gives us only indirect knowledge of the recipient of the message itself and the reactions to it.

However, the problem of languages introduces a very important difference between France and England and, in turn, affects the historiography of these two kingdoms through which we will try to follow the emergence and structuring of national histories and memories. Naturally, neither language, whether written or spoken, nor history, are the only vectors through which national memory is constructed, but they play an important role in it. Language is, above all, important as a strong indicator of the existence of a socially diverse readership. Until the end of the Middle Ages, Latin remained the language of the clergy, although it was known and used by a growing number of lay people, notably those who had learned and practised law, but the writing and large-scale circulation of works in the vernacular implies that an increasingly large audience was available to read them. From this point of view, a difference must be made between poetic and prose works. The former can eventually be considered as evidence of literature whose circulation was oral rather than written. It is therefore necessary to begin with a very rapid overview of the linguistic conditions of historiographical production in the two kingdoms.