2 Quotes by Paul Readman

Sources do not speak for themselves, graciously yielding up facts to the patient researcher, who approaches the evidence with his or her mind a tabula rasa cleared of personal views and preferences. Historians select material from archives and libraries with their minds freighted with preconceptions of various kinds, including hypotheses they wish to test, questions they want to answer, ideas about topics and issues they want to explore and understand.

Given the focus on language, it should come as no surprise that this book deals with what individuals said and published … The new “linguistic” emphasis of modern scholarship has added to our understanding of the past … Throughout, “language” is not recovered divorced from its historical context, but linked to the individuals who used it, and to their (and others’) actions and activities