Topography of a method : François Louis Ganshof and the writing of history

What does the practical work of writing contribute to historical writing? What does it mean for historical knowledge that it is, inescapably, written? Henning Truper explores quotidian practices of writing as constituting the working life of a historian, the Belgian mediaevalist Francois Louis Ganshof (1895-1980). The argument draws on a large variety of texts and writing situations, so as to discuss, across the fault lines of twentieth-century historiography, shifting patterns of methodological discourse; procedures of historicisation; the making of scholarly sociability in writing practice; and finally the actual writing of historical text. Ganshof the historian, whether as author, reader, teacher, student, polemic, diplomat, witness, or mere voice on the radio, remained bound to paperwork, an ensemble of small-scale routines and makeshift solutions that ultimately lacked a central steering agency. The nexus between historical knowledge and paperwork was indissoluble.-- Time -- Historical Reason CrossCountry -- Handbooks of discouragement -- Common sense in the margins -- The me in methodology -- Writing Historical Time -- History takes time and writing takes time too -- Regime changes -- Contests of the faculty -- The improbable career of Theo Luykx -- Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum -- Exchanges of letters -- Ganshof and Aristarque -- Layered vagueness -- The intelligibility of the past -- Knocking on wood -- Witnessing and the labour of being modern -- Limits of testimony -- The Episodic Republic -- Transcription into permanence also a conclusionPublished version of EUI PhD thesis, 200