Why read The Autumn of the Middle Ages?

Book cover of The Autumn of the Middle Ages

Book description

This is a portrait of life, thought and art in 14th- and 15th-century France and the Netherlands. Regarded as an historical classic by many scholars, it has also been criticized and incorrectly translated. This edition corrects changes made by other translators to the original Dutch text of 1919. For Huizinga,…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Autumn of the Middle Ages as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Robert Bartlett

Author

Huizinga’s book was first published more than 100 years ago, in 1919, but it retains its value as a sparkling and original evocation of the world of late medieval Europe: its values, its thought, its violence, and – one of its great strengths - its visual arts. This last is not surprising, since the author’s main focus is on the Netherlands and northern France, where oil painting, the realistic portrait, and the landscape began in European art. The book has been translated into English more than once, with significantly different titles: in 1924 as The Waning of the Middle Ages…

From Robert's list on The best books that look at medieval Europe as a whole.