The Autumn of the Middle Ages

by Huizinga, Johan

• ISBN13: 9780226359946
• ISBN10: 0226359948
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-11-24
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

"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 Agesis 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 thatThe 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" whenThe Waning of the Middle Ageswas 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

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction

Preface to the Dutch Edition

Preface to the German Translation

The Passionate Intensity of Life

The Craving for a More Beautiful Life

The Heroic Dream

The Forms of Love

The Vision of Death

The Depiction of the Sacred

The Pious Personality

Religious Excitation and Religious Fantasy

The Decline of Symbolism

The Failure of Imagination

The Forms of Thought in Practice

Art in Life

Image and Word

The Coming of the New Form

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.