Almost all of the poets and secular writers in France, Burgundy and the Netherlands during the 1300's-1400's were definitely of the second-rank - none remotely matched Chaucer or Petrarch. It needs to be emphasized that Huizinga's "required reading" of his literary sources was an heroic endeavor. He also closely studied the masterpieces of art produced during that period. To gain insight into the social milieu of his topic of study, Huizinga read widely in the literature of the 1300's-1400's.
The Garden of Love, from the Romance of the Rose, c. But everyone understood the life and death truths of their troubled times - regardless of how these elaborate fictions tried to disguise reality. Of course, this hugely popular poem was garbed with plenty of "look-but-don't touch" symbolism. Even more sensational were coy, erotic poems such as Romance of the Rose. While these calamities wreaked havoc, poets, especially at the court of the Duchy of Burgundy, diverted the minds of the aristocratic ruling class with tales of Chivalry. "So fierce and clamorous was life" during the late Middle Ages, Huizinga wrote in an immortal sentence, "that it could endure the mingled odor of blood and roses." Europe during the 1300's-1400's was wracked by wars, plagues and revolts. This process was anything but a calm, gradual process.
The Dutch word for autumn, Herfsttij, was chosen by Huizinga to reflect the way that the civilization of Medieval Europe had aged, atrophied and faded away. Huizinga's great work, Autumn (or Autumntide) of the Middle Ages, was published a century ago in 1919. Now, in the troubled twenty-first century, the Dutch scholar's historical insights are equally timely. What Huizinga wrote about Medieval Europe had a resonance for the events of 1914-1918. Huizinga chose a distant era, the late Middle Ages, on which to focus. University of Leiden-University of Chicago Press/$69.50/691 pagesĪs World War I raged across Belgium and northern France, a Dutch historian named Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) worked on a book about the culture of these battle-scarred regions.
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