“Flanders was empty and uncultivated and heavily wooded”: Historiography as Urban Resource in the Twelfth Century

Abstract

Abstract The stories that the inhabitants of a milieu tell themselves and others about that milieu are an important part of the immaterial, human, symbolic resources available to them to help them grasp, articulate and inflect their milieu’s historical development and thus shape its future. The conglomerate of stories that the inhabitants of a milieu tell themselves and others about that milieu, the milieu’s storyworld, is unique to that milieu and help make that milieu unique. A distinct storyworld is part of what makes one milieu different from other milieux, is 13 one of the matrices that orient and limit a milieu’s future development, part of what gives it its sens and leads it to develop in certain ways and not others. This is how the storyworld of a milieu, reflected in its historiography, is a resource for the development of that milieu.