Herfsttij Der Middeleeuwen by Johan Huizinga

Such a view of them presented itself to the author of this volume, whilst endeavouring to arrive at a genuine understanding of the art of the brothers Van Eyck and their contemporaries, that is to say, to grasp its meaning by seeing it in connection with the entire life of their times. The present work deals with the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries regarded as a period of termination, as the close of the Middle Ages. In a sense, this rendered him immune to changing fashion and imbued his work with a timeless and fresh appeal.From the Preface of the English translation. The reason why his work was given new importance in the nineties is undoubtedly connected with his study of history for history’s sake: not the wish to alter the present but to gain wisdom through the study of the past. His broad outlook and interdisciplinary approach, his concern with intellectual history and his evocative style made him – despite his expressly conservative views – one of the most modern of Dutch historians. This debatable but masterly study helped to make his name as a cultural philosopher.

In particular, the constitution, jurisprudence, warfare, culture in the narrower sense had their origin in serious games. Huizinga gained further international renown with his Homo ludens, in which he framed the bold hypothesis that culture has emerged in all the great civilisations in the form of a game. From then on, he was also considered a cultural critic. He wrote about this in his In de schaduwen van morgen ( In the Shadow of Tomorrow), a bestseller in Dutch and in many other languages. But he believed that he could detect disturbing developments even in his own west European cultural environment: the political system, the run-away economy, the daily press, radio and film, all filled him with grave concern. That same year his critical biography of the great humanist Erasmus appeared, in English as well as in Dutch.ĭuring the 1930s, Huizinga grew increasingly perturbed by the course of events under Communism in the Soviet Union and National-Socialism in Hitler’s Germany.

In 1924 he achieved international renown with Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen, in which he presented a dazzling panorama of the cultural history of France and the Netherlands in the age of the Dukes of Burgundy.

Herfsttij Der Middeleeuwen by Johan Huizinga