Innovating from tradition. Notes on historiographical production of Jacques le Goff, from the Mentalities to the Historical Anthropology

The writing and historiographical production of Jacques Le Goff pursued in the present work focuses on the time period when the Annales journal changed course, following the essential contributions of Fernand Braudel. This article discusses the work of Le Goff after the cultural shift of the latesixties, when he departed from the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and created the Groupe d’Anthropologie historique de l’Occident Medieval. Changes and innovations found in New History are a reflection and expression of the place from where Le Goff wrotes. Within the search for a medieval humanism that transformed alongside historical anthropology, we hold that the logic of Le Goff’s writing was a permanent dialogue between, on the one hand, an innovation stemming from its immediate contingency and, on the other hand, the past, and innovations of tradition.