French historiography between 1670 and 1730 had a dual function to fulfill: generating discursive knowledge and integrating imaging procedures, e.g. in the form of initially disavowed historical imagination. Even before its firm establishment as a discipline in its own right, 'historical vision' was domesticated at the theoretical level by the compromise between pure scholarship and philosophical speculation. At the same time, however, this gave the contribution of imagination to historical epistemology a new value, by virtue both of its greater evidential potential and of its conceptual creativity.