Le Moyen Âge et les boucles du temps. Entretien avec Étienne Anheim

• Main Authors: Étienne Anheim, Thomas Angeletti, Quentin Deluermoz, Juliette Galonnier
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: ENS Éditions 2019-10-01
• Series: Tracés
• Subjects: Middle Ages; periodization; epistemology; epoch; social sciences; event
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/traces/9712

Within the discipline of history, periodisation has effects that are not always adequately examined. The Middle Ages constitute a paradigmatic example of such an oversight. This period, which was for a long time a disparaging notion, was unknown to medieval people themselves and was developed a posteriori. Yet it solidified over the centuries and came to shape the European political imagination, knowledge frameworks in the social sciences and the institutional organisation of history as an academic discipline. In this interview with Tracés, French medievalist Étienne Anheim revisits the issues and challenges raised by the very notion of the Middle Ages and what it reveals about periodisation and historiography.