2024/10/02

Johan Huizinga - Wikipedia

Johan Huizinga - Wikipedia

Johan Huizinga

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Dutch historian. For the American physicist, see John Huizenga.
Johan Huizinga
Born7 December 1872
Groningen, Netherlands
Died1 February 1945 (aged 72)
De Steeg, Netherlands
Occupation(s)Historian, professor, writer
Academic background
InfluencesJacob Burckhardt
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
InstitutionsGroningen University (1905–1923)
Leiden University (1915–1942)
Notable works

Johan Huizinga (Dutch: [ˈjoːɦɑn ˈɦœyzɪŋɣaː]; 7 December 1872 – 1 February 1945) was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.

Life

[edit]
Huizinga (right) with the ethnographer A.W. Nieuwenhuis, Leiden (1917)
Huizinga plaque at Leiden University

Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth,[1] he started out as a student of Indo-European languages, earning his degree in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, gaining a good command of Sanskrit. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.

In 1902 his interest turned towards medieval and Renaissance history. He continued teaching as an Orientalist until he became a Professor of General and Dutch History at Groningen University in 1905. In 1915, he was made Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942. In 1916 he became member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.[2]

In 1942, he spoke critically of his country's German occupiers, comments that were consistent with his writings about Fascism in the 1930s. He was held in detention by the Nazis between August and October 1942. Upon his release, he was banned from returning to Leiden. He subsequently lived at the house of his colleague Rudolph Cleveringa in De Steeg in Gelderland, near Arnhem, where he died just a few weeks before Nazi rule ended.[3] He lies buried in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.[4]

Works

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Huizinga had an aesthetic approach to history, where art and spectacle played an important part. His most famous work is The Autumn of the Middle Ages (also released as The Waning of the Middle Ages or Autumntide of the Middle Ages) (1919).

Other works include Erasmus (1924) and Homo Ludens (1938). In the latter book he discussed the possibility that play is the primary formative element in human culture. Huizinga also published books on American history and Dutch history in the 17th century.

Alarmed by the rise of National Socialism in Germany, Huizinga wrote several works of cultural criticism. Many similarities can be noted between his analysis and that of contemporary critics such as Ortega y Gasset and Oswald Spengler. Huizinga argued that the spirit of technical and mechanical organisation had replaced spontaneous and organic order in cultural as well as political life. (Citation needed)

The Huizinga Lecture (Dutch: Huizingalezing) is a prestigious annual lecture in the Netherlands about a subject in the domains of cultural history or philosophy in honour of Johan Huizinga.[5]

Johan Huizinga’s archive and papers are held by Leiden University Libraries’ Special Collections and also available in its Digital Collections.[6] A complete inventory has been published.[7]

Family

[edit]

Huizinga's son Leonhard Huizinga became a writer, including his series of tongue-in-cheek novels on the Dutch aristocratic twins Adrian and Oliver [nl] ("Adriaan en Olivier").

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Mensch en menigte in America (1918), translated by Herbert H. Rowen as America; A Dutch historian's vision, from afar and near (Part 1) (Harper & Row, 1972)
  • Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), translated as Herbst des Mittelalters by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg (1924), The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924), as The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1996) and as Autumntide of the Middle Ages by Diane Webb (2020)
  • Erasmus of Rotterdam (1924), translated by Frederik Hopman as Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (1924)
  • Amerika Levend en Denkend (1926), translated by Herbert H. Rowen as America: A Dutch Historian's Vision, from Afar and Near (Part 2) (Harper & Row, 1972)
  • Leven en werk van Jan Veth (1927)
  • Cultuurhistorische verkenningen (1929)
  • In de schaduwen van morgen (1935), translated by his son Jacob Herman Huizinga In the Shadow of Tomorrow
  • De wetenschap der geschiedenis (1937)
  • Geschonden wereld (1946, published posthumously)
  • Homo Ludens. Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur (1938), translated as Homo Ludens, a study of the play element in culture (1955)
  • Nederland's beschaving in de zeventiende eeuw (1941). Translated by Arnold Pomerans as Dutch civilisation in the seventeenth century (1968)
  • “Patriotism and Nationalism in European History”. In: Men and Ideas. History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance. Transl. by James S. Holmes and Hans van Marle. New York: Meridian Books, 1959.
  • Men and ideas. History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance. Essays (1959). Translations by James S. Holmes and Hans van Marle of parts of Huizinga's Collected Works

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Liukkonen, Petri. "Johan Huizinga". Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi). Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 10 February 2015.
  2. ^ "J. Huizinga (1872 - 1945)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  3. ^ Hugenholtz, F.W.N. (November 12, 2013). "Huizinga, Johan (1872-1945)". Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland.
  4. ^ Van Ditzhuijzen, Jeannette (September 9, 2005). Bijna vergeten waren ze, de rustplaatsen van roemruchte voorvaderen. Trouw (Dutch newspaper), p. 9 of supplement.
  5. ^ Huizinga-lezing, Universiteit Leiden, archived from the original on 2011-07-25
  6. ^ "Huizinga Papers".
  7. ^ "Johan Huizinga archive".

Further reading

[edit]
  • Willem Otterspeer: Reading Huizinga. Amsterdam University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-90-8964-180-9
  • Jo Tollebeek: "At the crossroads of nationalism: Huizinga, Pirenne and the Low Countries in Europe," European Review of History (2010) 17#2 pp 187–215
  • Donald R. Kelley: Fortunes of history. Historical inquiry from Herder to Huizinga. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-300-09578-3
  • Johan Huizinga 1872-1972. Papers delivered to the Johan Huizinga Conference Groningen 11-15 december 1972. Ed. by W.R.H. Koops ... [et al.] The Hague, Nijhoff, 1973. ISBN 90-247-1609-8
  • Sean Farrell Moran "Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, and the Writing of History," Michigan Academician XLII (2016): 410-22

“Text and Subtext in Johan Huizinga’s Writings on America.” From the Halve Maen to KLM. 400 Years of Dutch-American Exchange. Eds. Margriet Bruijn Lacy, Charles Gehring, Jenneke Oosterhof. [Studies in Dutch Language and Culture vol. 2]. Münster (Germany): Nodus Publikationen, 2008, 311-320.

[edit]
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The Autumn of the Middle Ages - Wikipedia





The Autumn of the Middle Ages - Wikipedia

The Autumn of the Middle Ages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Autumn of the Middle Ages
AuthorJohan Huizinga
Original titleHerfsttij der Middeleeuwen
LanguageDutch
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.

Johan Huizinga: Autumntide of the Middle Ages. Book cover of 2020 edition.

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]
  1. ^ "The Autumn of the Middle Ages". press.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
  2. ^ “New English Edition of Huizinga's Autumntide Captures His Original Voice Better Than Ever”, The Low Countries, July 17, 2020.
  3. ^ "Autumn of the Middle Ages", Radio Netherlands, January 27, 1976.

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.
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Johan Huizinga

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



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Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture : Huizinga, Johan: Amazon.com.au: Books

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture : Huizinga, Johan: Amazon.com.au: Books

https://www.scribd.com/document/440486158/Johan-Huizinga-Homo-Ludens-pdf
https://archive.org/details/homoludensstudyo00huiz/page/n6/mode/1up


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Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture Paperback – 31 May 2016
by Johan Huizinga (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 317 ratings

In Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga defines play as the central activity in flourishing societies. He identifies five characteristics of play: it is free; it is not “ordinary” or “real” life; it is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration; it creates order; it is connected with no material interest, and from it no profit can be gained.

With cross-cultural examples from the humanities, business, and politics, Huizinga examines play in all its diverse guises―as it relates to language, law, war, knowledge, poetry, myth, philosophy, art, and much more. As he writes, “Civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play like a baby detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.”

Starting with Plato, Huizinga traces the contribution of “man the player” through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modern world. With an eye for our own times he writes: “In American politics [play] is even more evident. Long before the two-party system had reduced itself to two gigantic teams whose political differences were hardly discernible to an outsider, electioneering in America had developed into a kind of national sport.” With its remarkable historical sweep, Homo Ludens defines play for generations to come.

“A fascinating account of ‘man the player’ and the contribution of play to civilization.”―Harper’s

“A writer with a sharp and powerful intelligence, helped by a gift of expression and exposition which is very rare, Huizinga assembles and interprets one of the most fundamental elements of human culture: the instinct for play. Reading this volume, one suddenly discovers how profoundly the achievements in law, science, poverty, war, philosophy, and in the arts, are nourished by the instinct of play.”―Roger Caillois, editor of Diogenes








Paperback ‏ : ‎ 232 pages


From other countries

José Macaya
4.0 out of 5 stars Nuestra vida se fundamenta en reglas como las de los juegos. El ser humano juega a la vida.
Reviewed in Spain on 12 July 2021
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Aunque nos creemos que todo lo hacemos en serio, todos los elementos serios de nuestra vida están fundamentados en reglas del juego que vienen de antiguo y que empezaron con la tendencia natural del ser humano a crearnos ficciones con reglas que acordamos. Las normas de la caballería medieval, con sus normas de honor, son la base del derecho internacional. Todo el sistema legal deriva de juegos para dar la razón, como el juicio de Dios...
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Ector de la sgrellibus
5.0 out of 5 stars Dovrebbe essere un best seller
Reviewed in Italy on 26 May 2020
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Non si legge in maniera leggera, non è così semplice da apprezzare, ma è semplicemente estasiante.
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Alex Belanger
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential if you like to play... and think about it!
Reviewed in Canada on 20 September 2019
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Could have been easlily found free online but an important book nonethless. Happy to have it in my collection.
University level read for those interested in gaming and humanities.
Gaming would be the fondation of every civilization and the author proves it somehow.
Essential if you like to play... and think about it!
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Anderson Jerome
5.0 out of 5 stars Good Book
Reviewed in India on 26 August 2019
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Book is good
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Turtle
4.0 out of 5 stars Immer noch sehr interessant!
Reviewed in Germany on 21 April 2017
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Daß das Spiel in einem erweiterten Verständnis sogar bei der Entwicklung der Jurisprudenz mitgewirkt haben könnte, hätte ich mir nicht träumen lassen! Sehr detaillierte Beschreibung der Kultur um 1400. Huizinga beschreibt primär das Ende das französischen Mittelalters. Da in Frankreich die Kultur der Kelten durch Cäsar und die spätere Besiedelung von Soldatenlatein sprechender Bevölkerung weitestgehend ausgelöscht worden ist, konnte sich die beschriebene - mit Verlauf zu sagen: extrem dekandente - Kultur entwickeln (die katholische Kirche hatte dabei einen extrem großen Anteil). Für z.B. Norddeutschland haben wir kaum vergleichbare Quellen. Aber nach wem wenigen war zu wissen scheinen, dürfte dort ein eher bodenständigeres "Kulturleben" stattgefunden haben, auch mit weniger offensichtlicher Dekadenz.
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Allen Baird
5.0 out of 5 stars For all who suspect there's more to play than GTA5
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 October 2013
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I'm not competent to critique or even interact much with Homo Ludens academically. I read it because I'm interested in games, and people in the know cite Huizinga's book as the granddaddy of all games texts. Actually, he has little to say about games in the strict sense; his focus on play studies rather than technology (game design) or strategic decision-making (game theory).

What I can say is that it is a beautiful book, even in translation. It is rich in ideas, personal in tone, broad in scope, impressive in scholarship and radical in claims. Huizinga's central thesis is that the play-element 'of' (not 'in' as the badly translated subtitle suggests) culture is posterior to and generative of culture itself. Culture in its many aspects - law, war, science, poetry, religion, philosophy, art - bears the characteristics of play. Culture does not grow out from play, as an adult from the child; rather, culture advances "in and as play, and never leaves it" (173).

All I wish to do in this review is throw together some of Huizinga's main themes according as to how they struck me. Some of them seem contrary to the more contemporary game thinking I've encountered. Others serve as a basis for what modern games designers take for granted. Yet others have little relation to anything else in gaming literature anywhere. Let's see how these play out.

The Agon-y of Play
Recent literature likes to portray a vision of games as positive-sum, win-win, 'infinite' endeavours in which everyone moves on together (e.g. James P Carse). For Huizinga, the essence of play lies in the ancient Greek word "agon", meaning contest, struggle or competition (30-1, 48). Play assumes an antithesis of two competing parties, striving and suffering in an atmosphere of tension in which something is at stake. There are winners and losers, superior and relative inferior (47-51). This "agonistic instinct" in play is an expression of man's need to fight (61), and it infused the Greek attitude to many activates outside warfare (89), such as litigation (76), art (169) and philosophy (155-6). Indeed, agonistic play lie at the heart of the Greek understanding of the cosmos, in the eternal conflict of opposites (116-7).

Seriousness versus Play
Again, some writers contrast a play attitude with seriousness (e.g. Dan Pink). Common sense seems to agree. Huizinga does not. It has taken me a while to grasp what me means, but here's my understanding of it. Seriousness cannot be the dichotomy of play as that would assume a relationship of equality between them, albeit antithetically. Rather, play is a higher order concept than seriousness, existing at a more primitive and original level of life (119). Play can include seriousness (5-6), whereas seriousness can only try to exclude play (45). Play can operate both below and above the level of seriousness (18-19). In practice, the contrast between then is fluid (8); they form a continuum (110-111). Myth fails to recognise the distinction at all, living midway between the two (129, 131), as does music (159). The greatest human life is a blend of both (145) and the greatest times in history are driven by both e.g. the Renaissance (180-1, 191-2)

The Magic Circle (aka 'Virtual Worlds')
The modern concept of a "magic circle" is as a line that encloses the virtual worlds created by digital media, including games and online social environments, from the outside/offline/'real' world (see Edward Castronova). Huizinga was the first to formulate it. He names the term and uses it to describe one of his main ingratiates in the definition of play: play is secluded, limited in space, a temporary world within the ordinary world, "dedicated to the performance of an act apart" (10) in which the rules of the game apply (11) and outsiders are excluded (12). This playground is identical in form to a sacred spot where rites are performed (20), a startling point Huizinga makes elsewhere (18, 25). The law court serves as a prime example (77), as does the field of war (210). Sometimes the circle can be literal (57); at other times, it can embrace a whole culture (134). We can only disengage our minds from it by "turning towards the ultimate" (212).

Masks (aka 'Avatars')
Masks are made to evoke special emotion, to bring ordinary life to a standstill and make things 'not real' (21-2). When an ancient wore a mask, it was sign of withdrawal from the ordinary world. Wearing a mask transformed him into another ego, which "he did not so much represent as incarnate and actualise" (145). (Remember that avatar is the Sanskrit for incarnation.) Even today, when we attach no religious emotion to a mask, it still conveys the power of mystery, taking us beyond ordinary life (26). And that is its point: to emphasise the extra-ordinary nature of play, where the player takes another part and becomes another being (13, 77). If you are thinking 'super-hero' as you read this, you are right to do so (133 - also 75 and 101-2)!

When it comes to Huizinga's evaluation of the state of play in our contemporary world, it is probably fair to classify him as pessimistic. He contends that play and seriousness have become confused rather than fused together in a positive way. To illustrate his point, Huizinga focuses on an activity only mentioned briefly before (47): games. Many thinkers today wish to contrast games with play by defining games as organized play. Huizinga would have nothing of this; for him, play "creates order, is order" (10).

As games, particularly what we call sports, are taken with increasing degrees of seriousness, "something of the pure play-quality is inevitably lost...The spirit of the professional is no longer the true play-spirit; it is lacking in spontaneity and carelessness" (197). Moving in the opposite direction is business, in which commercial competition and rivalry, egged on by trading records, has turned capitalism into a sport (200). As for the quality of play commonly available and experienced today, Huizinga invented a new label for it: Puerileism (205), a blend of the adolescent and the barbaric. Ouch.

Huizinga cover a multitude of fascinating material from the play perspective, from secret societies and guilds (12, 171, 187, 203), to virtue ethics (64), from Heraclitus (116-7, 211) to creative writing (132 - see also 10). All of life is here. The publishers have classified it as 'sociology' but don't let that put you off. To read it is to engage in mental play with the author, and to engage with your own world in fresh ways as a result. Playful yet profound. No. Playful AND profound. As Huizinga has taught me, there is no contradiction, only shifting waves of seriosity on an infinite ocean of play.
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J Roe
5.0 out of 5 stars The book is in great condition and is also a great read
Reviewed in the United States on 13 February 2015
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The book is in great condition and is also a great read. One should read it with the recognition that it is very language/etymology/semantics heavy but thoroughly explores the concept of "playing man" from cultural, linguistic, sociological, and anthropological aspects. This was an assigned reading in my PhD program and was properly suited for that level of reading while also being rather enjoyable from all of the above listed major fields' perspectives. It is not light, easy reading though and will be enhanced if you understand at least some Latin, German, Dutch, and maybe are minimally bilingual with proficiency.
9 people found this helpful
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K.
5.0 out of 5 stars Crucial Reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 March 2021
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This book is an absolutely mandatory read for everyone interested in studying or even creating games (of all sorts).
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