The Autumn of the Middle Ages
 | |
| Author | Johan Huizinga |
|---|---|
| Original title | Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen |
| Language | Dutch |
Publication date | 1919 |
The Autumn of the Middle Ages, The Waning of the Middle Ages, or Autumntide of the Middle Ages (published in 1919 as Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen and translated into English in 1924, German in 1924, and French in 1932), is the best-known work by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga.
In the book, Huizinga presents the idea that the exaggerated formality and romanticism of late medieval court society was a defense mechanism against the constantly increasing violence and brutality of general society. He saw the period as one of pessimism, cultural exhaustion, and nostalgia, rather than of rebirth and optimism.
His main conclusion is that
- the combination of required modernization of statehood governance, stuck in traditionalism,
- in combination with the exhausting inclusion of an ever-growing corpus of Catholic rites and popular beliefs in daily life,
- led to the implosion of late medieval society.
This provided light to the rise of (religious) individualism, humanism and scientific progress: the renaissance.
The book was nominated for the 1939 Nobel Prize for Literature, but lost to the Finnish writer Frans Eemil Sillanpää.
Huizinga's work later came under some criticism, especially for relying too heavily on evidence from the rather exceptional case of the Burgundian court. Other criticisms include the writing of the book being "old-fashioned" and "too literary".[1]
A new English translation of the book was published in 1996 because of perceived deficiencies in the original translation. The new translation, by Rodney Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch, was based on the second edition of the Dutch publication in 1921 and compared with the German translation published in 1924.
To mark the centenary of Herfsttij, a new translation by Diane Webb appeared in 2020, published by Leiden University Press: Autumntide of the Middle Ages. According to Benjamin Kaplan, this translation "captures Huizinga's original voice better than either of the two previous English editions".[2] This new English edition also includes for the first time 300 full-colour illustrations of all the works of art Huizinga mentions in his text.
In the 1970s, Radio Netherlands produced an audio series about the book, entitled "Autumn of the Middle Ages: A Six-part History in Words and Music from the Low Countries".[3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]Sources
[edit]- Bouwsma, William J. (1974). "The Waning of the Middle Ages". Daedalus. 103 (1): 35–43.
- Peters, Edward; Simons, Walter P. (1999). "The New Huizinga and the Old Middle Ages". Speculum. 74 (3): 587–62. doi:10.2307/2886762. JSTOR 2886762. S2CID 162024427.
- Moran, Sean Farrell (2016). "Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, and the Writing of History". Michigan Academician. 43 (3): 410–423. doi:10.7245/0026-2005-43.3.410.
- Huizinga, Johan (2020). Autumntide of the Middle Ages. Leiden University Press. ISBN 9789087283131. Translated by Diane Webb. Edited by Graeme Small & Anton van der Lem. The translation is based on the Dutch edition of 1941 – the last edition Huizinga worked on. It features English renderings of the Middle French poems and other contemporary sources, and its colour illustrations include over three hundred paintings and prints, illuminated manuscripts, and miniatures pertinent to Huizinga’s discourse. Also includes a complete bibliography of Huizinga’s sources and an epilogue that addresses the meaning and enduring importance of this classic work.
External links
[edit]
The full text of The Waning of the Middle Ages at Wikisource.- Huizinga, Johan (1924), The Waning of the Middle Ages (scanned book), Edward Arnold & Co. – via Internet Archive.
The Waning of the Middle Ages public domain audiobook at LibriVox- Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen at Project Gutenberg (In original Dutch).
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The Autumn of the Middle Ages Hardcover – 15 March 1996
by Johan Huizinga (Author), & 2 more
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
"Here is the first full translation into English of one of the 20th century's few undoubted classics of history." ―Washington Post Book World
The Autumn of the Middle Ages is Johan Huizinga's classic portrait of life, thought, and art in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France and the Netherlands. Few who have read this book in English realize that The Waning of the Middle Ages, the only previous translation, is vastly different from the original Dutch, and incompatible will all other European-language translations.
For Huizinga, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century marked not the birth of a dramatically new era in history―the Renaissance―but the fullest, ripest phase of medieval life and thought. However, his work was criticized both at home and in Europe for being "old-fashioned" and "too literary" when The Waning of the Middle Ages was first published in 1919. In the 1924 translation, Fritz Hopman adapted, reduced and altered the Dutch edition―softening Huizinga's passionate arguments, dulling his nuances, and eliminating theoretical passages. He dropped many passages Huizinga had quoted in their original old French. Additionally, chapters were rearranged, all references were dropped, and mistranslations were introduced.
This translation corrects such errors, recreating the second Dutch edition which represents Huizinga's thinking at its most important stage. Everything that was dropped or rearranged has been restored. Prose quotations appear in French, with translations preprinted at the bottom of the page, mistranslations have been corrected.
"The advantages of the new translation are so many. . . . It is one of the greatest, as well as one of the most enthralling, historical classics of the twentieth century, and everyone will surely want to read it in the form that was obviously intended by the author." ―Francis Haskell, New York Review of Books
"A once pathbreaking piece of historical interpretation. . . . This new translation will no doubt bring Huizinga and his pioneering work back into the discussion of historical interpretation." ―Rosamond McKitterick, New York Times Book Review
Review
This massive, gorgeously illustrated volume [. . .] offers a new translation of Huizinga's classic supplemented by all sorts of useful and interesting material. It is in every way a superb production, beginning with Diane Webb's translator's note. If you know someone fascinated by the subject (especially someone you want to find a special gift for), you couldn't go wrong with this. Of course, you might want to add it to your own library as well.-- "First Things"
The Autumn of the Middle Ages Hardcover – 15 March 1996
by Johan Huizinga (Author), & 2 more
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
"Here is the first full translation into English of one of the 20th century's few undoubted classics of history." ―Washington Post Book World
The Autumn of the Middle Ages is Johan Huizinga's classic portrait of life, thought, and art in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France and the Netherlands. Few who have read this book in English realize that The Waning of the Middle Ages, the only previous translation, is vastly different from the original Dutch, and incompatible will all other European-language translations.
For Huizinga, the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century marked not the birth of a dramatically new era in history―the Renaissance―but the fullest, ripest phase of medieval life and thought. However, his work was criticized both at home and in Europe for being "old-fashioned" and "too literary" when The Waning of the Middle Ages was first published in 1919. In the 1924 translation, Fritz Hopman adapted, reduced and altered the Dutch edition―softening Huizinga's passionate arguments, dulling his nuances, and eliminating theoretical passages. He dropped many passages Huizinga had quoted in their original old French. Additionally, chapters were rearranged, all references were dropped, and mistranslations were introduced.
This translation corrects such errors, recreating the second Dutch edition which represents Huizinga's thinking at its most important stage. Everything that was dropped or rearranged has been restored. Prose quotations appear in French, with translations preprinted at the bottom of the page, mistranslations have been corrected.
"The advantages of the new translation are so many. . . . It is one of the greatest, as well as one of the most enthralling, historical classics of the twentieth century, and everyone will surely want to read it in the form that was obviously intended by the author." ―Francis Haskell, New York Review of Books
"A once pathbreaking piece of historical interpretation. . . . This new translation will no doubt bring Huizinga and his pioneering work back into the discussion of historical interpretation." ―Rosamond McKitterick, New York Times Book Review
Review
This massive, gorgeously illustrated volume [. . .] offers a new translation of Huizinga's classic supplemented by all sorts of useful and interesting material. It is in every way a superb production, beginning with Diane Webb's translator's note. If you know someone fascinated by the subject (especially someone you want to find a special gift for), you couldn't go wrong with this. Of course, you might want to add it to your own library as well.-- "First Things"
From the Back Cover
So begins one of the most famous works of history ever published, Johan Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Few who have read this book in English realize that The Waning of the Middle Ages, the only previous translation, is vastly different from the original Dutch, and incompatible with all other European-language translations. Now, for the first time ever, the original version of this classic work has been translated into English. Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, or The Autumn of the Middle Ages - the original title - is a brilliant portrait of life, thought, and art in fourteenth- and fifteenth- century France and the Netherlands. For Huizinga, this period marked not the birth of a dramatically new era in history, the Renaissance, but the fullest, ripest phase of medieval life and thought. Criticized both at home and in Europe for being "old-fashioned" and "too literary" when first published in 1919, the book is now recognized not only for its quality and richness as history, but also as a precursor to the Annales "histoire des mentalites" school of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, two of the few reviewers who praised the book initially. In the 1924 translation, Fritz Hopman adapted, reduced, and altered the Dutch edition - softening Huizinga's often passionate arguments, dulling his nuances, and eliminating theoretical passages. He dropped many passages Huizinga had quoted in their original old French. Additionally, chapters are rearranged and redivided, all references are dropped, and mistranslations are introduced. This translation corrects such errors, recreating the second Dutch edition - which represents Huizinga's thinking at its most important stage - as closely as possible.Everything that was dropped or rearranged has been restored. Prose quotations appear in French, with translations printed at the bottom of the page. Mistranslations have been corrected. Payton and Mammitzsch also have added helpful material, including Huizinga's preface to the first and second Dutch editions (published in 1919 and 1921) and the one to the 1924 German translation, where he touches on the book's title and offers some thoughts on translations. Several notes clarify Huizinga's references to things which would be common knowledge only to Dutch readers. Huizinga frequently refers to paintings, sculptures, and carvings, some little known; this edition is the first in any language to include a full range of illustrations.
About the Author
Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
Rodney J. Payton is a professor of liberal studies at Western Washington University. He is the author of A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's Inferno.
Ulrich Mammitzsch (1935-1990) taught in the General Studies and Liberal Studies departments at Western Washington University and served as director of East Asian Studies.
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Product details
Publisher : *University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (15 March 1996)
Language : English
Hardcover : 490 pages
Weslley
5.0 out of 5 stars Muito bomReviewed in Brazil on 28 June 2024
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Anirvan Dasgupta
5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage brillianceReviewed in India on 1 July 2018
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Let me start by saying that this wonderful book has aged a bit and attentive readers will see the wrinkles. But it still remains a great rock for lost sailors in the vast ocean of medieval history. All the usual criticism directed against this book is undoubtedly valid, but that does not take away its merits. While pointing at the cultural peculiarities and their emergence, this book somehow fails to a deeper look into the teeming life of everyman. Nevertheless., we should remain grateful to the author for presenting a vivid picture of the court life and its eccentricities. Modern historians may murmur about the book's geographical bias, but history, I believe, is essentially local and this magnificent book, even if a bit grandiloquent at times, adds to the perceived wonder of the middle ages.
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Skylark Scribe
5.0 out of 5 stars Beware of "The Autumn of the Middle Ages"Reviewed in the United States on 3 August 2012
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The five stars are for the original translation titled "The Waning of the Middle Ages," first published in 1949. Amazon doesn't (and should) have a separate listing for "The Autumn of the Middle Ages," a 1996 translation that is drastically different from "The Waning." The original translation ("The Waning") was done with the author Johan Huizinga's participation and is superb. It is fluent, poetic and probably transposes most of the highly acclaimed aesthetic qualities that Huizinga's writing is known for. On the other hand, "The Autumn" (done by two Western Washington University professors and published in 1996) is flat, boring, and reads like a bad tranlation homework assignment.
I thought they were the same book when I ordered from Amazon -- there was no information to indicate otherwise. I only realized that "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" was a completely different version after I read the introduction. And a few pages into the main text, I simply couldn't continue. The translators might think they were doing their students a favor by bringing in a newer, fuller translation, but no amount of good intention can compensate for dullness. On the second try I correctly ordered the "The Waning of the Middle Ages" and instantly understand why it is a classic when I started reading it. So whoever made the same mistake as I did the first time, don't give up. Get "The Waning" instead and you will love it.
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ISD
5.0 out of 5 stars Book: Middle AgesReviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 September 2012
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A highly recommended book on the subject. He is undoubtedly a brilliant scholar. The book contains many French quotes, but, thankfully, all are translated into English. The work requires slow digestion, but good food for the intellect. The translators did an outstanding job here. A masterpiece indeed!
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Annabell
5.0 out of 5 stars Great translation - useful readReviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 August 2018
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Really interesting read and the translation is good. I wanted it for my Art History degree studies but would be useful for any history student
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Valeriu Gherghel
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August 4, 2023
Ceea ce frapează, înainte de orice, la Johan Huizinga (1872 - 1945) este eclectismul uimitor al preocupărilor. Titlurile cărților publicate spun totul: Amurgul Evului Mediu (1919), Erasmus (1924), Homo ludens (1939).
În fața acestei curiozități multiple, cititorul rămîne perplex. Să acceptăm că Erasmus ține de sfîrșitul Evului Mediu, prezentat în prima lui carte, dar cum legăm Homo ludens de istoria sensibilității medievale? L-am studiat în Facultate la două disciplne diferite, Amurgul Evului Mediu la cursul de Istorie medievală apuseană (cu neuitatul profesor Gostar), Homo ludens la Istoria logicii și Retorică. Unii savanți creează opere centripete, ca să spun așa, în care adîncesc cîteva probleme (cum cerea Constantin Noica), alții sar de la un domeniu la altul și propun o operă centrifugă. Neîndoielnic, Huizinga a făcut parte din categoria polimaților, a indivizilor care suferă de nobilul viciu al curiozității.
Istoricii de școală i-au reproșat lipsa interesului față de latura economică a istoriei. Nu l-au interesat nici considerațiile de ordin politic. Nu i-a plăcut să vorbească despre înșiruirea evenimentelor și despre relația (rareori cauzală) dintre ele. Determinismul istoric nu l-a atras. S-a bazat pe intuiție (fantezie și invenție) - și Amurgul Evului Mediu arată în modul cel mai elocvent că a avut o intuiție ieșită din comun. E una dintre cele mai bune cărți pe care le-am citit. Johan Huizinga a intuit că se poate scrie despre Evul Mediu altfel decît o făceau savanții tradiționaliști. În fond, cartea lui prefigurează o mutație importantă în istoriografie. Istoricii de la Annales (Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch etc.) i-au preluat impulsul și au propus o istorie a emoțiilor și mentalităților. Au părăsit istoria evenimențială, dominată de principi, regi, intrigi politice și războaie de o sută de ani.
Pentru cititorii de acum un veac, cuprinsul volumului a fost, cu siguranță, surprinzător. Autorul prezenta, pornind de la un caz particular (curtea burgundă), aspecte ignorate de ceilalți medieviști. În Amurgul Evului Mediu, Huizinga scrie despre iubirea curtenească, despre farmecul ademenitor al culorilor, despre simbolism și decăderea lui (într-un capitol foarte prețuit de Umberto Eco), despre trăirile religioase la limita morbidului, despre fascinația relicvelor sau a eșafodului, să zicem. Cititorul afla astfel că monahii l-au fiert la propriu pe Thoma de Aquino, imediat după moarte, că misticii aveau obiceiuri culinare cel puțin ciudate, că, de pildă, germanul Heinrich Suso sau Seuse (circa 1300 - 1366), beatificat în 1831 de către papa Grigore al XVI-lea, mînca întotdeauna după prescripții liturgice:
„[Seuse] obișnuia, cînd mînca un măr, să-l taie în patru: trei părți le mînca în numele Sfintei Treimi, iar a patra o mînca [în numele pruncului Iisus]; de aceea această a patra parte o mînca necurățată, deoarece copiii mănîncă merele cu coajă... Băutura o sorbea din cinci înghițituri, în onoarea celor cinci răni ale Domnului, dar pentru că din coasta lui Iisus a curs sînge și apă, a cincea înghițitură o sorbea dublu”.
Într-o notă probabil ironică (dar la obiect), Huizinga face adaos amununtul că numitul John Tiptoft, conte de Worcester (1427 - 1470), condamnat la moarte chiar în vremea Războiului celor două Roze, l-a rugat pe călău să-l decapiteze din trei lovituri, în cinstea Sfintei Treimi. Astfel de amănunte miraculoase găsim peste tot.
Amurgul Evului Mediu ar putea fi rezumat în chipul următor: întortocheatul formalism al curților medievale, cavalerismul erotic, explozia culorilor, rătăcirile religioase au fost un răspuns la violența teribilă a unei epoci. Veacul de Mijloc a fost dominat de pesimism, dansuri macabre, epuizare artistică și melancolie (o descoperim, de exemplu, într-un poem scris de Lorenzo Magnificul). E o imagine exagerată, dar nu lipsită de oarece temei...
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What strikes, above all, about Johan Huizinga (1872 - 1945) is the amazing eclecticism of his concerns. The titles of the published books say it all: Twilight of the Middle Ages (1919), Erasmus (1924), Homo ludens (1939).
In front of this multiple curiosity, the reader remains perplexed. Let's accept that Erasmus belongs to the end of the Middle Ages, presented in his first book, but how do we connect Homo ludens to the history of medieval sensibility? I studied it in the Faculty in two different disciplines, the Twilight of the Middle Ages in the Western Medieval History course (with the unforgettable Professor Gostar), Homo ludens in the History of Logic and Rhetoric. Some scholars create centripetal works, so to speak, in which they delve into several problems (as Constantin Noica demanded), others jump from one field to another and propose a centrifugal work. Undoubtedly, Huizinga belonged to the category of polymaths, individuals who suffer from the noble vice of curiosity.
School historians reproached him for his lack of interest in the economic side of history. He was not interested in political considerations either. He did not like to talk about the chain of events and the relationship (rarely causal) between them. Historical determinism did not appeal to him. He relied on intuition (fantasy and invention) - and Twilight of the Middle Ages shows most eloquently that he had extraordinary intuition. It's one of the best books I've read. Johan Huizinga intuited that one could write about the Middle Ages differently than the traditionalist scholars did. Basically, his book foreshadows an important mutation in historiography. The Annales historians (Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, etc.) took up his impulse and proposed a history of emotions and mentalities. They left eventful history dominated by princes, kings, political intrigues and wars for a hundred years.
To readers a century ago, the contents of the volume were certainly surprising. The author presented, starting from a particular case (the Burgundian court), aspects ignored by the other medievalists. In the Twilight of the Middle Ages, Huizinga writes about courtly love, about the alluring charm of colors, about symbolism and its decay (in a chapter highly valued by Umberto Eco), about religious experiences bordering on the morbid, about the fascination of relics or the scaffold, for example . The reader thus learns that the monks literally boiled Thomas Aquinas immediately after his death, that the mystics had at least strange culinary habits, that, for example, the German Heinrich Suso or Seuse (circa 1300 - 1366), beatified in 1831 by to Pope Gregory XVI, always eat according to liturgical prescriptions:
"[Seuse] used to, when he ate an apple, cut it into four: three parts he ate in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he ate the fourth [in the name of the baby Jesus]; that's why this fourth part was eaten unclean, because children eat apples with their skin... He drank the drink in five sips, in honor of the five wounds of the Lord, but because blood and water flowed from Jesus' side, the fifth sip he sipped it twice."
In a probably ironic note (but to the point), Huizinga adds that the said John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (1427 - 1470), sentenced to death right at the time of the War of the Roses, asked the executioner to behead him from three strikes, in honor of the Holy Trinity. We find such miraculous details everywhere.
The twilight of the Middle Ages could be summed up as follows: the twisted formalism of the medieval courts, the erotic chivalry, the explosion of colors, the religious wanderings were a response to the terrible violence of an age. The Middle Ages were dominated by pessimism, macabre dances, artistic exhaustion and melancholy (we find it, for example, in a poem written by Lorenzo the Magnificent). It's an exaggerated image, but not without some basis...
Jan-Maat
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ReadOctober 23, 2017
Bought this by mistake thinking it was a book by Burckhardt, which was obviously pretty stupid as it clearly says Huizinga on the cover. But The Waning of the Middle Ages had been on my mind to read for some time which is what I use in place of a reading wish list, the fallibility of human memory helps by winnowing down the near infinite possibilities of reading to something more humanly achievable so I surrendered to the serendipity.
The book is an attempt to create a portrait of the age, specifically of the culture of the higher levels of society in Northern France and the Low Countries (there is a lot of focus on the court of the Dukes of Burgundy). So it is about what it was like to be alive then - how did people see the world, how did people behave, what was important to them, how did people express themselves and so on.
By it's very nature this kind of study is always going to be unsuccessful. Just as at some level a study of your culture based on a handful of memoirs, works of art and news reports will not capture the full experience and perception that you participate in as part of your culture.
If you want a story, a narrative history that can pretend to tell you how things actually happened then this is not the book for you. On the other hand for all it's shortcomings if you are interested the idea of trying to understand how people in a distant time experienced their world then this is still a book well worth reading.
Not that this is a dull journey of discovery, much of the exploration is through anecdote: the punch-up in a cathedral involving a bishop that led to a court case that rattled on for over a decade, people taking advantage of pilgrimages to engage in crafty extra-marital sex perhaps not precisely want Weber had in mind when he was thinking of the close relationship between sex and religion and my favourite - the noblewoman who kissed a sleeping troubadour and then said that she did not kiss the man only the lips that produced such beautiful songs.
Huizinga comes across as being very interested in Mentalitie and is an early practitioner of that approach. I'm sure that in many ways his work has been superseded and its limited focus on the world between Rhine and Seine is apparent but it remains readable and full of autumnal flavours.
20th-century burgundian france
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Katie
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December 12, 2011
This is a really difficult book for me to review. This is one of the first books that I ever read concerning medieval history, and it had quite a big impact on me, so Autumn of the Middle Ages is always going to have a special place in my heart. It's a really lovely book, beautifully written, and Huizinga makes genuinely fantastic use of stories and anecdotes. It's also full of some very good insights into medieval culture and it acts as a nice corrective to history books that rely solely on administrative, legal, and economic documentation. It's all very vibrant and very passionate.
That said, I also think that it's kind of wrong. Huizinga presents northern Europe of the later Middle Ages as a dying, ossifying society that's wasting away because it's elaborate culture of symbolism had used itself up. It's a rather attractive thesis, and it gives the book a quiet sadness that almost reads like an elegy, but it's problematic in the sense that Huizinga never adequately explains why the system failed when it did, and he never addresses the possibility that the culture of the era wasn't dying, but slowly transforming into something new. The whole book buys into the idea that cultures are monolithic, that they're born and they die, rather than being constantly evolving entities. And I think that's a pretty problematic way of looking at things.
But with that in mind, I think it's absolutely still worth reading. It's a bit dated and it's far from perfect but it's a real intellectual stimulant and one of the few history books I can see myself reading multiple times just for enjoyment.
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Ted
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May 27, 2018
We, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed. from the first page of the book
4 1/2
Johan Huizinga 1872 – 1945
Dutch historian
Norman Cantor on Huizinga
Norman Cantor, in Inventing the Middle Ages devotes five pages to Huizinga, in his closing chapter called Outriders. The historians he discusses here (Huizinga, Eileen Edna Power, Michael Postan, Carl Erdmann, Theodor Mommsen) are not quite significant enough; or didn’t produce quite enough published work; or were a bit too recent - to fit into an ensemble of Middle Age historians which, in his view, "invented" our own conception of this time period.
Cantor nevertheless has plenty of good things to say about Huizinga and the others. He writes that Huizinga
had no successors, and the approach he adopted has found no significant imitators. The Waning of the Middle Agesis likely to appear on anyone's list of the ten best books ever written on medieval history, and a plausible argument would place it near the top [it's one of the all-time best sellers on the subject] … But Huizinga stands alone and remote from the ongoing dialogues in medieval studies.
the author and his book
Johan Huizinga is often mentioned as a founder of modern cultural history. In the short autobiography that he composed in the last decade of his life, he tells of writing Waning when he was told that his academic job was in jeopardy if he could not come up with a significant publishable book. He retired for the summer to his mother-in-law's farm, sat there in the "hot attic" with some material from the fifteenth century, and wrote the book before the fall called him back to the university.
Huizinga writes in his brief preface to the English edition,
History has always been far more engrossed by problems of origins than by those of decline and fall… in medieval history we have been searching so diligently for the origins of modern culture, that at times it would seem as though what we call the Middle Ages had been little more than the prelude to the Renaissance.
But in history, as in nature, birth and death are equally balanced. The decay of overripe forms of civilization is as suggestive a spectacle as the growth of new ones. And it occasionally happens that a period in which one had, hitherto, been mainly looking for the coming to birth of new things, suddenly reveals itself as an epoch of fading and decay.
The present work deals with the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regarded as a period of termination … Such a view presented itself to the author whilst endeavoring to arrive at a genuine understanding of the art of the brothers Van Eyck and their contemporaries, that is to say, to grasp its meaning by seeing it in connection with the entire life of their times. Now the common feature of the various manifestations of civilization of that epoch proved to be inherent rather in that which links them to the past than in the germs which they contain of the future. The significance, not of the artists alone, but also of theologians, posts, chroniclers, princes, and statesmen, could be best appreciated by considering them, not as the harbingers of a coming culture, but as perfecting and concluding the old.
Now, viewed thus by the author, it would seem that this thesis is not amenable to simple demonstration by testimony of historical document. When men (and women) write of art, or create art, the writings and creations themselves are always thrusting towards the future, and a historian interested in their connection to the past must oftentimes do his analysis from the distant future, bringing his creative imagination into play to find the connections with a past that was not the concern of the subjects being studied. Thus, quite as much as the book was, in its inception and writing, not the typical heavily researched academic study, it is a work of the historical imagination.
the book itself
"waning" or "autumn"?
Huizinga's book was published in 1919. It's Dutch title was Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, which translates directly to The Autumn of the Middle Ages (an evocative enough title, to be sure). When it was translated to English in 1924 the title was rendered The Waning of the Middle Ages.
To me, the second title is even more evocative.
Wane: to dim, to decline; to gradually fade away. That word, waning, almost makes me catch by breath. To write of the waning of an era in European history, an era which lasted several centuries, or by some reckonings, a thousand years, and to render the subject of the narrative as the fading away of this immense span of time, of human endeavor, human art - of millions of lives slowly fading into an irrevocable past … well, I love the title. I'll never toss the book, who could throw away that title from their bookshelf?
stuff
Some of the fundamental issues examined in the book are chivalry; the conventions and views of love and heroism; the religious thought of the age and way it affected artistic imagination; the decline of religious symbolism and the dawning of realism; and the ways in which art interacted with everyday life.
Fourteen full page black and white illustrations, all works of art from the period, by Rogier van der Weyden, Jan Van Eyck, and others.
Portrait of Giovanni Annolfini Jan van Eyck
The 10-page Bibliography of little use to this reader, almost all books in French, some in Dutch or other Euro languages. The equally long index however is very good. I like perusing an index to see names that are extensively referenced in the narrative. Here I note various Dukes of Burgundy (Charles the Bold, Philip the Good, others); Georges Chastellain (Burgundian chronicler and poet, d. 1475); Eustace Deschamps (French poet, 1346-1406); Jan van Eyck (Netherlandish painter of Bruges, 1390-1441); Jean Froissart (French-speaking author and court historian of the Low Countries, 1337-1405); Jean Gerson (French scholar, reformer, poet and theologian, 1363-1429); Olivier de la Marche (courtier, chronicler, poet of the Duchy of Burgundy, 1425-1502); Louis XI of France, 1423-1483); Jean Molinet (French poet, chronicler and composer, 1435-1507); Louis, duke of Orleans, 1372-1407 (shades of In a Dark Wood Wandering!; René of Anjou (titular King of Sicily, 1409-1480); Francois Villon (French poet, b. 1431, disappeared 1463); and Edmund, Duke of York (1341-1402). Also many references to Roman de la Rose.
tmi?
In this spoiler I've listed the 23 chapters of the book. Following a group of these is (in another spoiler) the sometimes edited status that I submitted at that point in my read. Some of the status comments appear elsewhere in the review.
I The Violent Tenor of Life
II Pessimism and the Ideal of Sublime Life
III The Hierarchic Conception of Society
Good so far. Huizinga's thesis is that by looking at the Middle Ages as a precursor to what followed (economically, politically, artistically), we miss the essence of the end of the Middle Ages, as the people then living saw their own time - and that this view deserves study for its own sake.
IV The Idea of Chivalry
V The Dream of Heroism and of Love
VI Orders of Chivalry and Vows
VII The Political and Military Value of Chivalrous Ideas
VIII Love Formalized
chaps. IV-VIII heavy going through this, seemed like I was reading for a graduate course. I enjoyed VII "The Political and Military Value of Chivalrous Ideas"; also the discussion of the Roman de la Rose in VIII. Interest waxed and waned elsewhere.
IX The Conventions of Love
X The Idyllic Vision of Life
XI The Vision of Death
XII Religious Thought Crystallizing into Images
Most interesting recent chapters: Vision of Death (“No other age has laid so much stress as the expiring Middle Ages on the thought of death.”), Religious Thought Crystallizing Into Images (Key points: the astonishing multiplication of religious orders, saints, relics, feast days, special offices; and the way in which the sacred permeates the profane so thoroughly that the distinction between the two is nigh lost.
XIII Types of Religious Life
XIV Religious Sensibility and Religious Imagination
XV Symbolism in its Decline
XVI The Effects of Realism
XVII Religious Thought beyond the Limits of Imagination
XVIII The Forms of Thought and Practical Life
Six chapters exploring the interrelations between religion, religious thought, and the underlying modes of thinking and perceiving in the Middle Ages. Way more interesting than expected. Book now cluttered with underlining and notes. The Church in the Middle Ages tolerated many religious extravagances, provided they did not lead up to novelties of a revolutionary sort, in morals or in doctrine. Many examples.
XIX Art and Life
Objects of pure art and articles of luxury and curiosity were equally admired. Long after the Middle Ages the collections of princes contained works of art mixed up indiscriminately with knick-knacks made of shells and of hair, wax statues of celebrated dwarfs … Time the destroyer has made it easy for us to separate pure art from all these geegaws and bizarre trappings … This separation … did not exist for the men of that time.
XX The Aesthetic Sentiment
One … means at least satisfied deeper aesthetic instincts: beauty (as) the sensations of light and splendor … This tendency to explain beauty by light sprang from a strong predilection of the medieval mind … when men of the Middle Ages attempt to express aesthetic enjoyment, their emotions are caused by sensations of luminous brightness or of lively movement.
XXI Verbal and Plastic Expression Compared. I
XXII Verbal and Plastic Expression Compared. II
XXIII The Advent of the New Form
Didn't write a status for the last three chapters. Generally I found these somewhat difficult, particularly XXI.
Some quotes:
from XXI
Nor should the art of the brothers Van Eyck be called Renaissance. Both in form and in idea it is a product of the waning Middle Ages. If certain historians of art have discovered Renaissance elements in it, it is because they have confounded, very wrongly, realism and Renaissance. Now this scrupulous realism, this aspiration to render exactly all natural details, is the characteristic feature of the expiring Middle Ages. It is the same tendency which we encountered in all the fields of thought of the epoch, a sign of decline and not of rejuvenation. The triumph of the Renaissance was to consist in replacing this meticulous realism by breadth and simplicity.
from XXII
"For the spirit of the epoch nothing heightened so much the acrid flavor of sad and sensitive love as the addition of an element of profanation."
And yet here we are still dealing with the representation of scenes borrowed from reality. When the whole had to be created by the unaided imagination, the art of the period cannot avoid the ridiculous… It is impossible to imagine anything more awkward [than the illustrations by Jean Miélot for the Epitre d'Othéa à Hector]. The Greek gods have large wings outside their ermine mantles… Saturn devouring his children, Midas awarding the prize, are simply ridiculous and devoid of all charm… we have come to the limit of the creative faculty of these artists. Easily masters of their craft, so long as observation of reality is their guide, their mastery fails at once when imaginative creation of new motifs is called for.
Imagination, both literary and artistic, had been led into a blind alley by allegory.from XXIII
Huizinga's conclusion is given in the main review.
first and last words
Huizinga writes (in front of the opening quote, far above)
To the world when it was half a thousand years younger, the outlines of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us. The contrast between suffering and joy, between adversity and happiness, appeared more striking... Every event, every action, was still embodied in expressive and solemn forms, which raised them to the dignity of a ritual. For it was not merely the great facts of birth, marriage and death which, by the sacredness of the sacrament, were raised to the rank of mysteries; incidents of less importance, like a journey, a task, a visit, were equally attended by a thousand formalities: benedictions, ceremonies, formulae.
Calamities and indigence were more afflicting than at present; it was more difficult to guard against them, and to find solace. Illness and death presented a more striking contrast; the cold and darkness of winter were more real evils. Honours and riches were relished with greater avidity and contrasted more vividly with surrounding misery.
and a book later, he concludes
The fifteenth century in France and the Netherlands is still medieval at heart. The diapason of life had not yet changed. Scholastic thought, with symbolism and strong formalism, the thoroughly dualistic conception of life and the world still dominated. The two poles of the mind continued to be chivalry and hierarchy. Profound pessimism spread a general gloom over life. The gothic principle prevailed in art. But all these forms and modes were on the wane. A high and strong culture is declining, but at the same time and in the same sphere new things are being born. The tide is turning, the tone of life is about to change.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Sense of History
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June 27, 2019
This is a classic, of course. But I found it hard to read and appreciate. The subtitle is correct: this is no overview of political, political, or military facts (also no economic ones), but rather an excursion in the various aspects of late-medieval attitudes of mind. The focus is not on philosophy and religion, but on the "ideals of the mind", let's say mental history: the knight-ideal, the codes of honour, courtly love, the sense of reality, and so on. I think it is a bit too one-sided based on narrative sources and it focuses more on France than the Low Countries.
Of course, as always with Huizinga, this is wonderfully written. But the effect is largely lost because of the abundance of examples, most of which are peppered with quotes in old French, and thus difficult to read. As far as I can discern, Huizinga's views seem rather speculative, in this sense that he is trying to reconstruct the late-medieval society in Western Europa through the instrument of historical imagination. That gives this views a very personal, but also quite subjective flavour. In short: this book should now be read rather as a literary document than a work of science. I don't mean this in a denigrating way, it's just a factual statement.
classic medieval-age
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Miglė
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January 17, 2022
Mačiau, kad visi giria autoriaus stilių, bet sako, kad per daug pavyzdžių prikišta ir citatų iš Viduramžių prancūzų literatūros, o man kaip tik pavyzdžiai labiausiai patiko: tos bendros autoriaus įžvalgos kelia norą ginčytis, o pavyzdžiai - tikras džiaugsmas tiems, kas nori aprėpti daugiau tuometinio gyvenimo, bet neturi prabangos kapstytis po archyvus.
Štai keli:
• Kai kurie keliaujantys pamokslininkai buvo tikros žvaig��dės, kai pasklisdavo gandas, kad koks garsesnis atkeliauja į miestą, minios rinkdavosi dar iš vakaro, kad gautų gerą vietą. Dažnai pamokslininkai smerkdavo žmogiškus turtus ir skatindavo juos deginti ten pat sukurtame lauže, tai žmonės, ateidami klausyti, specialiai pasiimdavo kokių gerai degančių turtų, kokį drabužį kailinį, ar smailą kepurę, kad galėtų dalyvauti ir ekstatiškai giedoti, turtams pleškant!
• Žmonės labai trokšo aistringai visur dalyvauti, o tų pramogų daug nebuvo, bet kai jau būdavo, tai nepamažindavo. Štai Paryžiuje vienu metu buvo rengiamos aklųjų kautynės - keturi akli žmonės bus aprengti šarvais ir kausis tarpusavyje, o laimėtojas gaus paršiuką! Keturias dienas prieš kautynes po Paryžių vaikščiojo procesija su keturiais šarvuotais kovotojais ir paršiuku, vėliavomis ir šaukliu, kuris skelbė apie artėjančią pramogą.
• Ką daryti, kai nevalia pernelyg mėgautis dalykais, bet norisi? Susieti estetiką su dorybėmis! Tuomet galima ir gražios muzikos klausytis, jei ji šlovina Viešpatį, ir paveikslus su menkai prisidengusiom poniom žiūrėti, jei jos simbolizuoja dieviškas dorybes, ir po kriokliu palįsti, jei galvoji, kad krioklys taip pila vandenį, kaip Jėzus pila savo meilę žmonėms. Pliusas - malonumas tampa dorybingas. Minusas - visas pasaulis persipildo įmantrios, bet gana bukai į save nurodančios simbolikos, gal žmogus imi jau kiek ir pavargti nuo tų septynetų visur, bet nėr kur dėtis.
• Dabar žmonės dažnai Viduramžius sieja su seksualinio gyvenimo suvaržymais, bet tuo metu, sako autorius (ir ne tik šis), kur kas didesnis tabu buvo puikybė. Bet kai esi kilmingas, labai sunku nerodyti savo turtų ir šlovės, nes reikia ir mužikus suvaldyti, ir draugų pagarbą pelnyti, ir priešams baimės įvaryti. Vienas geras būdas išspręsti šį sudėtingą klausimą - būti turtingu, bet nuolatos kitus pamokyti apie dorybes visokias. Tarnams paskaityti iš Biblijos, pietus surengti su tinkamu patiekalų skaičium (žr. viršuj), melstis labai daug etc. Galima tik įsivaizduoti, mauni kokiam durniui batus, o jis tau pamokėlę apie tarnystę skaito.
• Kai kurie kilmingieji rinkosi kitą būdą išvengti puikybės - nusižeminimą, kas kartais išsiversdavo į tokį cirką, kad juokinga skaityti. Vienas norėjo, kad po mirties jo kūnas būtų palaidotas po bažnyčios slenksčiu, idant visi prasčiokai jį praeidami mindytų. Kitas norėjo perspjauti aną ir reikalavo, kad jo kūną po mirties pririštų prie arklio ar tai vežimo ir vilktų gatvėmis iki bažnyčios, ant tiek jis nevertas. Kažkaip visi labai gudrūs buvo po mirties nusižeminti. Dar kiti bodėjosi dvaro manieromis ir idealizavo paprastų kaimiečių gyvenimą, kaip tyrai jie myli, kaip paprastai gyvena arti gamtos, kaip vat tose paprastose sielose nėra mums, išprusėliams, būdingų problemų. Tai jie ten eidavo prie šaltinėlio pasikirkint, pamatę kaimiečius, lenkdavosi jiems, o kaimiečiai turbūt norėdavo facepalminti, bet neturėjo laiko, nes reikėjo dirbti, kad galėtų aniems duoklę išmokėti.
• Šiaip žmonių tikėjimas buvo nuoširdus, ir toks nuoširdus, kad dvasininkams reikėjo nuolat laužyti galvą, kaip čia viską pasukus, kad pamaldumas neperaugtų į profanaciją ir stabmeldystę. Pavyzdžiui, matydami šventųjų atvaizdus, žmonės melsdavosi šventiesiems - Bažnyčia sakė, ok, jei melsitės ne jiems patiems, o prašysite jų užtarimo. Žmonės neprieštaravo, bet vis tiek eidavo gydytis prie stebklingų paveikslų, o rožinį naudojo kaip nuo piktos akies saugantį amuletą. Dar kunigai vis stengėsi pasergėti žmones, kad nustotų šv. Juozapą per kalėdinius vaidinimus vaizduoti kaip kaimo durnelį, kuriam Marija įstatė ragus. O procesijos išvis buvo problema ir dvasininkai vis susirašinėjo, ką daryti, kad žmonės nebesirinktų ten prisigerti ir nusipirkti nepadorių paveiksliukų, bet vis tiek sueitų iš aplinkinių vietovių ir miestas gautų pinigų. Dalis problemų išsisprendė, kai kažkas sugalvojo, kad galima melstis angelui sargui - taip ir nestabmeldžiaujama, ir pats dievas netrukdomas dėl kažkokių smulkmenų.
• Paskutinis epizodas: toks Roberter labai žavisi Chastellainu, baisiai nori pradėti susirašinėjimą su juo ir prašo draugo, Chastellaino pažįstamo, tarpininkauti. Idėja paeina, Chastellainas atrašo savo gerbėjui, o tas eilėmis išreiškia savo džiaugsmą, gavus pirmąjį Chastellaino atsakymą: "Sužavėtas, sujaudintas esu, apimtas malonumo, mano kūnas tyso ant žemės ekstazėje, silpnas protas per daug sutrikęs, kad kelio ieškotų, kad rastų vietą ir palankią išeitį iš ankštos perėjos, kurion esu įspraustas, sugautas tinklais, kuriuos tikra meilė nuaudė". Na, jie toliau susirašinėja kurį laiką, ir Chastellainą pradeda užknisti Roberter gražbyliavimai, tuomet jis jam siunčia tokį laišką: "Robertet apipylė mane iš savo debesies perlais, kurie, susitelkę tame debesyje lyg krušos ledai, padarė mano drabužį spindintį; bet kokia iš to nauda mano tamsiam kūnui po drabužiu, kuris apgauna žmones?" ir toliau sako, kad jei Robertet nebaigs išsidirbinėti, jis mesiantis jo laiškus ugnin neskaitęs.
Jau ir pati pavargau gražbyliauti, bet siūlau paskaityti, labai smagi knyga, ir išmoninga, ir tie perlai, ak, tie perlai!
history non-fiction read-in-2021
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I've seen everyone praise the author's style, but say there are too many examples and quotations from medieval French literature, and it's the examples that I like the most: those general insights of the author make you want to argue, and the examples are a real joy for those who want to cover more of life at that time, but does not have the luxury of digging through the archives.
Here are a few:
• Some of the itinerant preachers were real stars, and when word spread that someone more famous was coming to town, crowds would gather early in the evening to get a good spot. Often the preachers condemned human wealth and encouraged them to be burned in the bonfire created on the spot, so people, coming to listen, specially took some well-burning wealth, some fur garment, or a pointed hat, so that they could participate and sing ecstatically, while the wealth was burning!
• People were very passionate about participation everywhere, and there wasn't much of that entertainment, but when it was, it didn't diminish it. Here in Paris, at one time, blind fights were held - four blind people will be dressed in armor and fight each other, and the winner will get a piglet! Four days before the fighting, a procession walked through Paris with four armored fighters and a pig, flags and a herald announcing the upcoming entertainment.
• What to do when you shouldn't enjoy things too much, but you want to? Connect aesthetics with virtues! Then you can listen to beautiful music, if it glorifies the Lord, and look at pictures with scantily clad ladies, if they symbolize divine virtues, and crawl under the waterfall, if you think that the waterfall pours water as Jesus pours his love to people. Plus - pleasure becomes virtuous. Minus - the whole world is overflowing with sophisticated, but rather bluntly self-referential symbolism, maybe a person is getting a little tired of those sevens everywhere, but there is nowhere to go.
• Now people often associate the Middle Ages with restrictions on sexual life, but at that time, says the author (and not only this one), a far greater taboo was pride. But when you are noble, it is very difficult not to show your wealth and glory, because you need to control men, earn the respect of your friends, and instill fear in your enemies. One good way to solve this difficult question is to be rich, but constantly teach others about virtues of all kinds. For the servants to read from the Bible, to organize a lunch with the right number of dishes (see above), to pray a lot, etc. One can only imagine that you are buying some idiot's shoes, and he is giving you a lesson about service.
• Some nobles chose another way to avoid pride - humiliation, which sometimes turned into such a circus that it is funny to read. One wanted his body to be buried under the threshold of the church after his death, so that everyone would trample on it as they passed by. Another wanted to pierce her and demanded that his body after death be tied to a horse or cart and dragged through the streets to the church, he is not worthy of that. Somehow, all very cunning were humbled after death. Still others admired the manners of the manor and idealized the life of ordinary villagers, how pure they love, how they usually live close to nature, how those simple souls do not have the problems typical of us, educated people. They used to go there to the spring, when they saw the villagers, they bowed to them, and the villagers probably wanted to facepalm, but they didn't have time, because they had to work in order to pay tribute to them.
• In any case, people's faith was sincere, and so sincere that the clergy had to constantly puzzle over how to turn things around so that piety would not turn into profanation and idolatry. For example, seeing images of saints, people prayed to the saints - the Church said, ok, if you pray not to them, but to ask for their intercession. People did not object, but still went to the miraculous paintings for healing, and used the rosary as an amulet against the evil eye. The priests still tried to take care of the people so that St. During the Christmas plays, Joseph is portrayed as a village fool, to whom Mary has put horns. And the processions were a problem at all, and the clergy kept writing to each other about what to do so that people would no longer gather there to get drunk and buy obscene pictures, but would still come from the surrounding areas and the city would receive money. Some of the problems were solved when someone came up with the idea that it is possible to pray to the guardian angel - that way one does not stop praying, and the god himself is not disturbed by some little things.
• The last episode: this Roberter admires Chastellain very much, is anxious to start a correspondence with him, and asks a friend, an acquaintance of Chastellain, to mediate. The idea takes hold, Chastellain writes to his admirer, who expresses in verse his joy at Chastellain's first reply: "Delighted, thrilled I am, overwhelmed with pleasure, my body lies silent on the ground in ecstasy, my feeble mind too confused to seek a way, to find a place and a favorable way out of the narrow passage in which I am trapped, caught in the nets that true love has cast." Well, they continue to correspond for a while, and Chastellain
Xander
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August 9, 2022
This is probably the worst book I've read in the past years. Huizinga's work on fourteenth and fifteenth century Burgundy is usually hailed by academics and lay people alike as a cornerstone in Medieval history.
Frankly, the book lacks structure, focus and conciseness. It basically reads like one long summation of all sorts of irrelevant and uninteresting details, punctuated by short, clear and insightful passages. The style is clearly outdated (already when Huizinga wrote this book) and leaves readers to grapple with archaic and incomprehensible sentences. Also, Huizinga never introduces topics or persons - he simply writes down what he wants and that's that. This makes for very difficult reading.
Finally, Huizinga's approach to history is very idealistic, almost Hegelian or Platonist. I don't buy any of it. One of the main takeaways of this book is that during the fifteenth century mystical ideas (mainly theological ideas) lost their meaning in their realizations in everyday life. People lived according to certain conventions and rituals, which were forms of lost ideas (i.e. empty, meaningless).
This idealistic approach to life and history smells Hegelian - and I don't buy Hegel. At all. Marx was right in turning Hegel around and starting from materialism. Or, to paraphrase Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid." Huizinga explicitly rejects economic and political-military factors as driving forces of history. According to him, these factors can play a role but are insufficient in explaining historical developments. Ideas and their concrete manifestations are what counts.
But for all his pompous writing, Huizinga isn't even able to describe clearly what these ideas were (an exception is his treatment of the idea of chivalry) and even less clearly how these ideas manifested themselves in everyday life. He seems to randomly mention some examples of this and that, based on source so and so, and then jump to the next thing. His general thesis seems to be that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Burgundian high culture became more and more artificial and cut off from its theological-historical sources.
So, apart from the literary drawbacks mentioned above we end up with a rather not so interesting, not so original thesis. A thesis that is mostly ridiculous anyway (sorry, I don't buy Platonist-Hegelian idealism). So yeah, this was definitely not my cup of tea - I honestly don't understand all the fuss about this book.
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icaro
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February 5, 2019
La malinconica ferocia di un mondo al tramonto. Ideali, canzoni d'amore, tornei dove sovrani veri giocano con i simboli di un passato immaginato.
Un grande libro, un intramontabile classico della storiografia del primo Novecento. Si legge come un romanzo perchè in ogni parola risuona l'amore dell'autore per il passato fiammeggiante di un paese scomparso dai libri di storia
all preferiti-top-dei-top storia-medievale
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Caroline
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ReadApril 30, 2021
First of all, edition. I listened to the first version in English, originally published in 1924, and then read the newer, complete version, published in 1996 (Univ of Chicago Press) . I did it twice, because I kept spacing out listening, so I missed the thread, and much of the material. The complete version is much better, in my novice opinion. The progression of ideas makes more sense. The first version jumbled the order of the chapters, was incomplete, and according to the later translators, was not accurate in many cases. Quotations below are from the 1996 edition.
Now we have come to the point from which we intend to view the culture of late medieval times: the point of the beautification of aristocratic life with the forms of the ideal—the artistic lights of chivalric romanticism spread over life, with the world costumed in the garb of the round table. The tension between the forms of life and reality is extremely high; the light is false and overdone.
Huizinga then proceeds to establish, in his opinion, the falsity, superficiality, and decay of virtually all aspects of culture of France and the Netherlands in his window of analysis. He supports his argument with extensive examples from the documents, literature, and artwork of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His themes include the particularization and focus on details, lack of attention to context or commonalities that are not physically visible, adherence to prescribed forms and tropes, insistence on fitting everything into hierarchies, the importance on the visual and surface as opposed to what lies within, and dividing everything into either the ideal or the sinful. The result, he says, is primitive thought, unable to advance into the complexity and non-sinful delight in life in literature, art and philosophy that would develop during the northern Renaissance.
Huizinga does allow for the genius of the van Eyck brothers. Luckily a year or so ago I had snagged a used book enhanced with gorgeous tipped-in plates of their work, titled Flemish painting from the van Eycks to Metsys by Leo Van Puyvelde. Autumn itself includes a generous section of plates in black and white, but if you can get some supplemental color illustrations it will enhance his discussion of the arts.
I read this adjacent to some related works that make for interesting contrasts and similarities: Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and Lucien Febvre’s The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais . Bakhtin ranges far from Dostoevsky, returning to carnival (see his Rabelais and His World ), discussing Menippean satire and emphasizing the polyphonic nature of Dostoevsky’s writing: Bakhtin finds Dostoevsky’s great strength in his books' assemblage of characters who each have their own powerful and equal voice and point of view (polyphony). This came to mind when Huizinga discusses the carnival in a much more pejorative way, and notes the resistance to newfangled polyphonic church music during the late Middle Ages.
The connection to Lebvre’s book was not only in the overlap between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, but also in their author’s style. Both were born in the 1870s and presumably trained in similar environments; both present an elaborate, dense, erudite thicket to the reader. A sample from Huizinga’s critique of the excess of symbolism in the late Middle Ages:
Symbolic thought causes the continuous transfusion of the feeling for God’s majesty and for eternity into everything that can be perceived and thought. It never allows the fire of the mystic life to be extinguished. It permeates the idea of anything with heightened aesthetic and ethical value. Just try to imagine the enjoyment of seeing every jewel sparkle with the splendor of its symbolic value, of the moment when the identity of roses with virginity is more than just poetic Sunday dress, the time when identification points to the essence of both. It is a true polyphony of thought. In a completely thought-out symbolism, each element reverberates in a harmonious musical chord of symbols. Symbolic thinking yields to that intoxication of thought, leads to that pre-intellectual obscuring of the definition of things, that muting of rational thought, which lifts the intensity of the feeling for life to its very peak.
As he discusses at length regarding The Romance of the Rose.
Or
Art, too, tries to leave nothing unformed, unpresented, or undecorated. The flamboyant Gothic is like an endless organ postlude; it breaks down all forms by this self-analyzing process; every detail finds its continuous elaboration, each line its counterline. It is an unrestrainedly wild overgrowth of the idea by the form; ornate detail attacks every surface and line. The horror vacui, which may perhaps be identified as a characteristic of end periods of intellectual development, dominates in this art.
So, I wouldn’t take Huizinga’s disdainful treatment of the period as my only source of information, but he is thorough and the Baroque style gives some idea of the very elaboration he is railing against.
arts dutch-literature history
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Darrick Taylor
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June 13, 2012
Huizinga's work is a classic look at the literary and artistic culture of fifteenth century Burgundy and France. His thesis is basically that the literature and art of the ages reveals that a culture in decay, ripened to the point where its cultural "forms" (an idea he never defines exactly) have overgrown the ideas they were meant to convey. Huizinga believed that the boundary between what we call the Renaissance and the Middle Ages was porous, something that scholars today seem to accept for the most part. However, his work was pioneering at the time, and it still concludes many gems of insight for those willing to work through this classic book. He did have a few ideas about modernity and knowledge that will seem outdated, and he can be fairly dismissive of the achievments of the period at times. But all in all, the book is well worth one's time for those interested in this period of European history, and a must read for serious students of that era.
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July 24, 2020
Ne uzimajte ovoga autora ako želite naučiti nešto o srednjem vijeku, radije uzmite Le Goffa koji je puno sistematičniji i jasniji. Ovaj autor po meni ne razumije srednji vijek uopće. Dovoljno mi je bilo to kako vjeruje da su zanesenost ljepotom srednjovjekovni ljudi uvijek zamijenjivali religijskim zanosom (tj. on kaže da ono što oni nazivaju religijskim zanosom nije drugo nego zanesenost ljepotom), a kao netko tko je osjetio i religijski zanos i zanesenost ljepotom, znam da govori gluposti. Moram i spomenuti da je posebna vrsta zanesenosti kad se ta dva zanosa spoje.
Uglavnom, preskočite ovoga autora ako vas zanima srednji vijek, bio je ovo gubitak vremena.
2020 medieval non-fiction
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9 likes
Like
Comment
Skrivena stranica
415 reviews80 followers
Follow
July 24, 2020
Ne uzimajte ovoga autora ako želite naučiti nešto o srednjem vijeku, radije uzmite Le Goffa koji je puno sistematičniji i jasniji. Ovaj autor po meni ne razumije srednji vijek uopće. Dovoljno mi je bilo to kako vjeruje da su zanesenost ljepotom srednjovjekovni ljudi uvijek zamijenjivali religijskim zanosom (tj. on kaže da ono što oni nazivaju religijskim zanosom nije drugo nego zanesenost ljepotom), a kao netko tko je osjetio i religijski zanos i zanesenost ljepotom, znam da govori gluposti. Moram i spomenuti da je posebna vrsta zanesenosti kad se ta dva zanosa spoje.
Uglavnom, preskočite ovoga autora ako vas zanima srednji vijek, bio je ovo gubitak vremena.
2020 medieval non-fiction
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