This book took me 10 months to finish, which usually means it failed to pull me along, and I needed to rely on my completionism to pull me through. Yes this is a seminal wok of (art) history, and i can see why, but the views it espouses on the way are just utterly outdated. From normative and hierarchical views of artistic "progress" to Huizinga's Calvinism tainting his views of medieval catholicism there's a lot in this book that just made me(ahistorically) think what a prick.
I don't think I would recommend reading this book even to art history students (unless to quote mine it, I guess). There are better books out there making good cohesive and readable arguments about the late middle ages (and they'll likely boil down Huizinga's main point more succinctly than he ever did). ( )

The Waning of the Middle Ages was groundbreaking cultural study when it was published in 1924. He drops a lot of names, assuming that readers automatically know who he is talking about. For example, he mentions Emerson, but does not identify as Ralph Waldo Emerson. He relies on texts from the period and Froissart, Denis the Carthusian, and the Chastellain are frequently referred to by Huizanga. He paints the late Middle Ages as a dark,violent, and melancholy time of contradictions. He argues that the dominant thoughts of the period that governed norms and behaviors literally ran into a dead end leading to new ideas and a new era. ( )

There were certainly some interesting topics on chivalry and the political process, for instance, as well as Leaders being accustomed to fighting rather than throwing the peasantry into battle. While I used to be interested in medieval period, this book just did not hold my interest. I suppose I feel more relevant topics to be more useful at this point in my life. ( )

There were certainly some interesting topics on chivalry and the political process, for instance, as well as Leaders being accustomed to fighting rather than throwing the peasantry into battle. While I used to be interested in medieval period, this book just did not hold my interest. I suppose I feel more relevant topics to be more useful at this point in my life. ( )

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 ( )

Huizinga writes vividly and with a keen eye for an engaging anecdote, but overall I found The Waning of the Middle Ages (also translated into English as The Autumn or The Decline of the Middle Ages) to be more useful as a source for early twentieth-century understandings of the Middle Ages, and indeed for then contemporary culture, than for the medieval period itself. The particular topics on which Huizinga chooses to write are interesting, and indeed presage many of the studies which later cultural historians and historians of mentalité, would produce—feuds and hairstyles, colour symbolism and pageantry.

But the tone and measure of the judgement which Huizinga passes on fourteenth and fifteenth-century western Europe was a turn-off to me. One of the tricky balancing acts which historians must of course perform is to pass judgment without being judgemental; to recognise their own roles in constructing historical narratives without letting their own particular presence warp that narrative. It's not an act which Huizinga pulls off; he is too convinced of the inherent superiority of his own period of history. He condescends to the Middle Ages as a period of childishness, of "superficiality, inexactness, and credulity"; Huizinga repeatedly informs the reader that medieval people said or did or believed things which "we" would of course disdain. I can see why this is a minor classic in the field, but it's not one which I found inspirational. ( )

I read the old translation (The Waning of the Middle Ages) many years ago and found it vivid. I understand this new translation is considered better and conveys a more positive image of the late middle ages. ( )

I would only add to baswood's excellent review that the emotionalism Huizinga describes also had to do with how young most people were. ( )

This wonderful book has kept me enthralled over the last four days. This is a translation from a Dutch edition published in 1921, made in 1996 by Payton and Hammitzsch. Huizinga takes a critical look at the history of fourteenth and fifteenth century France and the Low Countries with a view to understanding why people acted the way they did at this period in History.

The writing/translation flows magnificently as Huizinga covers topics such as: the passionate intensity of life, the static social structure, failure of knighthood, the preoccupation of death and fear of life, power of religious imagery, the dualism of piety and worldliness, a failure of imagination and art and literature. Huizinga takes a bleak view of the period and says at the end of the first chapter:

"It is an evil world. The fires of hatred and violence burn fiercely. Evil is powerful, the devil covers a darkened earth with his black wings. And soon the end of the world is expected. But mankind does not repent, the church struggles, and the preachers and poets warn and lament in vain."

Huizinga warns us that to understand the culture the reader should transpose his/her thoughts into the minds of the the medievals' and no matter how incomprehensible they are to us we must accept them. The real strength of the book is the attempt to see the world through the eyes of the participants in the history. We learn that they are intensely passionate, cruel aggressive but easily reduced to tears, a belief that God made the world good but man's sinfulness has made it miserable, a mind stuffed with religious imagery and proverbs preventing critical thought and a propensity to take every thought and argument to the highest level (God)

This book has given me an insight to books that I have recently read on this period I have a better understanding of why King Edward III was so intent on securing his French territories and why Chaucer wrote the way he did.

The book was first published in 1919 and academic study of the late middle ages has moved on since then. This is no reason to ignore this marvellous book which gives a view of the period that still has plenty to offer. ( )

I studied this book in undergrad as part of my focus on European cultural history with Professor Peyton at WWU. It acts as a major underpinning for me in regards to my understanding of the Middle Ages. There is so much to be learned about the human experience in this unique text. It deserves another read and I shall give it one soon. ( )

"To the world when it was half a thousand years younger," [the author] begins, "the outline of all things seemed more clearly marked than to us." Life seemed to consist in extremes – a fierce religious asceticism and an unrestrained licentiousness, ferocious judicial punishments and great popular waves of pity and mercy, the most horrible crimes and the most extravagant acts of saintliness – and everywhere a sea of tears, for men have never wept so unrestrainedly as in those centuries.

This brilliant portrait of the life, thought, and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is our most trenchant study of that crucial moment in history when the Middle Ages gave way to the great energy of the Renaissance. From an analysis of the dominating ideas of the times – those that held the medieval world together, supported its religion and informed its art and literature – emerges the style of a whole culture at the extreme limit of its development.

Ein Klassiker der Kulturgeschichtsschreibung - vergleichbar mit Jakob Burkhardts "Kultur der Renaissance". Huizingas großes Panorama der Kultur des Spätmittelalters beruht auf der gründlichen Auswertung von Quellen des burgundischen und französischen Raums (einschließlich von Bildwerken, theologischen Texten und fiktionaler Literatur). Brilliant geschrieben und ein Lesegenuss. ( )

excellent insights into how people change society. ( )

2/7/23

history

Changing ideas about health and death.

Changing ideas about health and death.

This is the older translation, superseded by
Autumn of the Middle Ages

INDEX; BIBLIOGRAPH; FRONTISPIECE

NOTES; INDEX; ILLUSTRATIONS