The Waning of the Middle Ages
by Johan Huizinga · Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1919
- Form
- History
- Language
- Dutch
- Length
- Long · 470 pp300 to 700 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe Autumn of the Middle Ages, translated by Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich MammitzschUniversity of Chicago Press, 1996The first complete English translation; Hopman's 1924 abridgement, which Great Books reprints, cut a third of the book.
These links go straight to Amazon and Bookshop.org and earn this site nothing today. Prices are the same either way. How this works.
A study of life, thought and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, published in Dutch in 1919. Huizinga presents the period not as the dawn of the Renaissance but as the overripe end of the Middle Ages, in which the forms of chivalry, courtly love, religious devotion and the cult of death had grown extravagant and hollow. He reads chronicles, poems and the paintings of van Eyck as evidence of a sensibility, not just a sequence of events.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The Waning of the Middle Ages are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
