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Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (The Middle Ages Series)
by Joshua Byron SmithWhy would the sprawling thirteenth-century French prose Lancelot-Grail Cycle have been attributed to Walter Map, a twelfth-century writer from the Anglo-Welsh borderlands known for his stinging satire, religious skepticism, ghost stories, and irrepressible wit? And why, though the attribution is spurious, is it not, in some ways, implausible?Joshua Byron Smith sets out to answer these and other questions in the first English-language monograph on Walter Map—and in so doing, he offers a new explanation for how narratives about the pre-Saxon inhabitants of Britain, including King Arthur and his knights, first circulated in England. Smith contends that it was inventive clerics like Walter, and not traveling minstrels or professional translators, who popularized these stories. Smith examines Walter's only surviving work, the De nugis curialium, to demonstrate that it is not the disheveled text that scholars have imagined but rather five separate works in various stages of completion. This in turn provides new evidence to support his larger contention, that ecclesiastical networks of textual exchange played a major role in exporting Welsh literary material into England.Medieval readers incorrectly envisioned Walter withdrawing ancient Latin documents about the Holy Grail from a monastery and compiling them in order to compose the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. In this detail they were wrong, Smith acknowledges, but a model of literary transmission that is not vernacular and popular but Latinate and ecclesiastical demands our serious consideration.
Walter Pater
by Denis DonoghueA TWENTIETH-CENTURY intellectual of the first rank presents the case for the nineteenth-century aesthetician whose elegant subversions delivered us to modernism. Walter Pater (1839-1894) was an obscure Oxford don until 1873, when his first book, The Renaissance, exposed his argument favoring sensation over though and, in doing so, ignited a hard, gem-like flame. "Say not what it is but what it makes you see--or feel" is not something Pater ever said, but it will suffice as an encapsulation of an attitude that moved the authority of a work of art from the object to the subject, subsequently outraging the defenders of perceived truth of his time and making Pater himself a figure of controversy and even ridicule. Substituting sensationalism for sensation and reading Pater's claim for hedonism, or pleasures the soul might savor, as outright decadence, Pater's detractors far outnumbered and outranked his followers (including his fellow Oxonian and most notorious devotee, Oscar Wilde). But ever since Pater has proved, at least in the high arts, the decisive victor of the revolutions he set into motion. Denis Donoghue presents what will stand as the premier inquiry into Walter Pater's life and ideas: a work of compelling erudition unrivaled in intuitive and intellectual force, revealing with eloquence, charm, and abundant yet measured discourse Pater's centrality to the entire modernist movement. "Pater is audible," Donoghue writes, "in virtually every attentive modern writer--in Hopkins, Wilde, James, Yeats, Pound, Ford, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Aiken, Hart Crane, Fitzgerald, Forster, Borges, Stevens." Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls is both an education and an inspiration for anyone at all concerned with the changing character of latter-day Western culture. Here, without question, is a classic: a critical biography that lays open the very making of the culture that both assails and sustains us.
Walter Pater: The Critical Heritage (Critical Heritage Ser.)
by R. M. SeilerFirst Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Walter Ralegh's History of the World and the Historical Culture of the Late Renaissance
by Nicholas PopperImprisoned in the Tower of London after the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, Sir Walter Ralegh spent the next seven years producing his massive "History of the World. "Created with the aid of a library of more than five hundred books he was allowed to keep in his quarters, this incredible work of English vernacular would become a best-seller with nearly twenty editions, abridgments, and continuations issued in the years that followed. aNicholas Popper uses RaleghOCOs "History" as a touchstone in this lively exploration of the culture of history writing and historical thinking in the late Renaissance. From Popper we learn why early modern Europeans ascribed heightened value to the study of the past and how scholars and statesmen began to see historical expertise as not just a foundation for political practice and theory, but a means of advancing their power in the courts and councils of contemporary Europe. The rise of historical scholarship during this period encouraged the circulation of its methods to other disciplines, transforming EuropeOCOs intellectualOCoand politicalOCoregimes. More than a mere study of RaleghOCOs book, PopperOCOs book reveals how the methods historians devised to illuminate the past structured the dynamics of early modernity in Europe and England. "
Walter Scott: The Critical Heritage
by John O. HaydenThe Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels.The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation.Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects.
Walter Scott (Routledge Library Editions: The Nineteenth-Century Novel #27)
by Robin MayheadFirst published in 1968, this study is an exciting and challenging introduction to the writings of Sir Walter Scott. The author discusses the more striking features of Scott’s style — his use of language and characterisation — and also evaluates the contemporary moral and political attitudes portrayed in the novels. The use of literary conventions of the time is examined with reference to Scott’s work and extracts exemplify in particular the use of the Heroic. While admitting Scott’s faults as a writer, the author presents a general view of him as one whose works deserve deeper study than was the prevailing opinion at the time. This book will be of interest to students of literature.
Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism #132)
by Susan OliverThe work of Walter Scott, one of the most globally influential authors of the nineteenth century, provides us with a unique narrative of the changing ecologies of Scotland over several centuries and writes this narrative into the history of environmental literature. Farmed environments, mountains, moors and forests along with rivers, shorelines, islands and oceans are explored, situating Scott's writing about shared human and nonhuman environments in the context of the emerging Anthropocene. Susan Oliver attends to changes and losses acting in counterpoint to the narratives of 'improvement' that underpin modernization in land management. She investigates the imaginative ecologies of folklore and local culture. Each chapter establishes a dialogue between ecocritical theory and Scott as storyteller of social history. This is a book that shows how Scott challenged conventional assumptions about the permanency of stone and the evanescence of air; it begins with the land and ends by looking at the stars.
Walter Scott and the Historical Imagination (Routledge Library Editions: The Nineteenth-Century Novel #4)
by David BrownFirst published in 1979. This study explores the main critical issues that arise out of a modern reading of Scott’s work, and treats the major novels in detail. It tackles the questions of Scott’s place in literary history and his problems in pioneering the historical novel. As well as examining the greater novels of the Scottish series, the author also deals with the relation between historical fiction and reality, with reference to the Waverley Novels, and Scott’s own attitude to history. Also discussed are some of the possible reasons for Scott’s failure to depict conflicts in his contemporary society. This book would be of interest to students of literature.
Walter Scott's Books: Reading the Waverley Novels (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)
by J.H. AlexanderScott's Books is an approachable introduction to the Waverley Novels. Drawing on substantial research in Scott's intertextual sources, it offers a fresh approach to the existing readings where the thematic and theoretical are the norm. Avoiding jargon, and moving briskly, it tackles the vexed question of Scott's 'circumbendibus' style head on, suggesting that it is actually one of the most exciting aspects of his fiction: indeed, what Ian Duncan has called the 'elaborately literary narrative', at first sight a barrier, is in a sense what the novels are primarily 'about'. The book aims to show how inventive, witty, and entertaining Scott's richly allusive style is; how he keeps his varied readership on board with his own inexhaustible variety; and how he allows proponents of a wide range of positions to have their say, using a detached, ironic, but never cynical narrative voice to undermine the more rigid and inhumane rhetoric. The Introduction outlines this approach and sets the book in the context of earlier and current Scott criticism. It also deals with some practical issues, including forms of reference and the distinctive use of the term 'Authorial'. The four chapters are designed to zoom in progressively from the general to the particular. 'Resources' explores the printed material available to Scott in his library and gives an overview of the way he uses it in his fiction. 'Style' confronts objections to the 'circumbendibus' Scott and shows how his Ciceronian style with its penchant for polysyllables enables him to embrace a wide range of rhetoric relayed in a detached but not cynical Authorial voice. 'Strategies' explores how he keeps his very wide audience on board by a complex bonding between characters, readers, and Author, and stresses the extraordinary variety of exuberant inventiveness with which he handles intertextual allusions. 'Mottoes' examines the most remarkable of Scott's intertextual devices, the chapter epigraphs, bringing into play the approaches developed in the previous chapters. The brief concluding 'Envoi' moves out again to the widest possible perspective, suggesting how readers should now be able to move on to, or return to, the novels and the critical conversation, with an appreciation of the central importance of the ludic for an appreciation of Scott in a world once again threatened by inhumane and humorless rigidities.
Walter Warthog's Wonderful Wagon (Animal Antics A to Z)
by Barbara deRubertisMore than anything, Walter Warthog wants the wonderful white wagon in the hardware store window! But his wallet is empty. Will he find a way to earn money and make the wagon his very own?
Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons: (Opinions)
by Kurt VonnegutWampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is a rare opportunity to experience Kurt Vonnegut speaking in his own voice about his own life, his views of the world, his writing, and the writing of others. An indignant, outrageous, witty, deeply felt collection of reviews, essays, and speeches, this is a window not only into Vonnegut&’s mind but also into his heart.&“A book filled with madness and truth and absurdity and self-revelation . . . [Vonnegut is] a great cosmic comedian and rattler of human skeletons, an idealist disguised as a pessimist.&”—St. Louis Post-DispatchIncludes the following essays, speeches, and works: &“Science Fiction&” &“Brief Encounters on the Inland Waterway&” &“Hello, Star Vega&” &“Teaching the Unteachable&” &“Yes, We Have No Nirvanas&” &“Fortitude&” &“&‘There&’s a Maniac Loose Out There&’&” &“Excelsior! We&’re Going to the Moon! Excelsior!&” &“Address to the American Physical Society&” &“Good Missiles, Good Manners, Good Night&” &“Why They Read Hesse&” &“Oversexed in Indianapolis&” &“The Mysterious Madame Blavatsky&” &“Biafra: A People Betrayed&” &“Address to Graduating Class at Bennington College, 1970&” &“Torture and Blubber&” &“Address to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, 1971&” &“Reflections on my Own Death&” &“In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself&” &“Thinking Unthinkable, Speaking Unspeakable&” &“Address at Rededication of Wheaton College Library, 1973&” &“Invite Rita Rait to America!&” &“Address to P.E.N. Conference in Stockholm, 1973&” &“A Political Disease&” &“Playboy Interview&”
The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy
by Leonard S. MarcusIn a series of incisive interviews, Leonard S. Marcus engages thirteen master storytellers in spirited conversation about their life and work, providing inspiring reading for fantasy fans and future writers alike. What kind of child were you? When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? Why do you write fantasy? "Fantasy," writes Leonard S. Marcus, "is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable and to reveal our own 'real' world in a fresh and truth-bearing light." Few have harnessed this power with the artistry, verve, and imagination of the authors encountered in this compelling book. How do they work their magic? Finely nuanced and continually revealing, Leonard S. Marcus's interviews range widely over questions of literary craft and moral vision, as he asks thirteen noted fantasy authors about their pivotal life experiences, their literary influences and work routines, and their core beliefs about the place of fantasy in literature and in our lives.
The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles (Legends from the Ancient North)
by Petra BornerPart of a new series Legends from the Ancient North, The Wanderer tells the classic tales that influenced JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings'So the company of men led a careless life,All was well with them: until One beganTo encompass evil, an enemy from hell.Grendel they called this cruel spirit...'J.R.R. Tolkien spent much of his life studying, translating and teaching the great epic stories of northern Europe, filled with heroes, dragons, trolls, dwarves and magic. He was hugely influential for his advocacy of Beowulf as a great work of literature and, even if he had never written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, would be recognised today as a significant figure in the rediscovery of these extraordinary tales.Legends from the Ancient North brings together from Penguin Classics five of the key works behind Tolkien's fiction.They are startling, brutal, strange pieces of writing, with an elemental power brilliantly preserved in these translations.They plunge the reader into a world of treachery, quests, chivalry, trials of strength.They are the most ancient narratives that exist from northern Europe and bring us as near as we will ever get to the origins of the magical landscape of Middle-earth (Midgard) which Tolkien remade in the 20th century.
Wanderers: Literature, Culture and the Open Road (Routledge Focus on Literature)
by David Brown MorrisThis book introduces the idea and experience of wandering, as reflected in cultural texts from popular songs to philosophical analysis, providing both a fascinating informal history and a necessary vantage point for understanding - in our era - the emergence of new wanderers. Wanderers offers a fast-paced, wide-ranging, and compelling introduction to this significant and recurrent theme in literary history. David Brown Morris argues that wandering, as a primal and recurrent human experience, is basic to the understanding of certain literary texts. In turn, certain prominent literary and cultural texts (from Paradise Lost to pop songs, from Wordsworth to the blues, from the Wandering Jew to the film Nomadland) demonstrate how representations of wandering have changed across cultures, times, and genres. Wanderers provides an initial overview necessary to grasp the importance of wandering both as a perennial human experience and as a changing historical event, including contemporary forms such as homelessness and climate migration that make urgent claims upon us. Wanderers takes you on a thoroughly enjoyable and informative stroll through a significant concept that will be of interest to those studying or researching literature, cultural studies, and philosophy.
Wanderers Across Language: Exile in Irish and Polish Literature of the Twentieth Century
by Kinga Olszewska"Exile has become a potent symbol of Polish and Irish cultures. Historical, political and cultural predicaments of both countries have branded them as diasporic nations: but, in Adorno's dictum, for an exile writing becomes home. Olszewska offers a multifaceted picture of the figure of exile in postwar Poland and Ireland, juxtaposing politics and culture: whereas Irish exile appears more in an economic and cultural context, the essence of Polish exile is political. This comparative study of works by Polish and Irish authors - Stanislaw Baranczak, Adam Zagajewski, Marek Hlasko, Kazimierz Brandys, Brian Moore, Desmond Hogan and Paul Muldoon - shows a literature which not only depicts the experience of exile, but which uses exile as a literary device."
The Wandering Pine: Life as a Novel
by Per Olov EnquistWhen everything began so well, how could it turn out so badly? A blisteringly frank autobiographical novel by Sweden's great man of letters - for readers of K. O. Knausgaard's My Struggle."Some life. Some novel . . . Wonderful, brave, evocative . . . It is a remarkable story, and Enquist is remarkably frank in narrating every last detail" HeraldWhat was it about Hjoggböle, a farming village in the northernmost part of Sweden, that created so many idiots - and writers? There was nothing to indicate that P.O. Enquist would be stricken by an addiction to writing. Nothing in his family - honest, hardworking people. Not a trace of poetry. And yet he worked his way, via journalism, novels and plays, to the centre of Swedish politics and cultural life. His books garnered prize after prize. His plays ran for decades and premiered on Broadway. Why then, living with a new wife in Paris, does he hole up in their palatial Champes-Élysées apartment, talking only to his cat? How is it that he wakes to find himself in an uncoupled carriage on a railway siding in Hamburg, two - or was it three? - days after the first-night party finished? And what is it that drives him to run shoeless through the deep January snow of an Icelandic plain, leaving the lights of the drying out clinic far behind? Narrating in the third person, as if he were merely a character in the eventful, perplexing and ultimately triumphantly redemptive drama of his own life, P.O. Enquist is as elliptical as Karl Ove Knausgaard is exhaustive. Clear-eyed, rueful, written with elegance and humour, this is the singular story of a remarkable man.
The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary
by Erin Graff ZivinWhile Jews figure in the work of many modern Latin American writers, the questions of how and to what end they are represented have received remarkably little critical attention. Helping to correct this imbalance, Erin Graff Zivin traces the symbolic presence of Jews and Jewishness in late-nineteenth- through late-twentieth-century literary works from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, and Nicaragua. Ultimately, Graff Zivin's investigation of representations of Jewishness reveals a broader, more complex anxiety surrounding difference in modern Latin American culture. In her readings of Spanish American and Brazilian fiction, Graff Zivin highlights inventions of Jewishness in which the concept is constructed as a rhetorical device. She argues that Jewishness functions as a wandering signifier that while not wholly empty, can be infused with meaning based on the demands of the textual project in question. Just as Jews in Latin America possess distinct histories relative to their European and North American counterparts, they also occupy different symbolic spaces in the cultural landscape. Graff Zivin suggests that in Latin American fiction, anxiety, desire, paranoia, attraction, and repulsion toward Jewishness are always either in tension with or representative of larger attitudes toward otherness, whether racial, sexual, religious, national, economic, or metaphysical. She concludes The Wandering Signifier with an inquiry into whether it is possible to ethically represent the other within the literary text, or whether the act of representation necessarily involves the objectification of the other.
Wandering Women In French Film And Literature
by Mariah Devereux HerbeckHow and when can a narrative agent or voice be considered unreliable? What happens when narrative authority fails and, just as importantly, why does it? As a means to answering these questions, Wandering Women in FrenchFilm and Literatureexamines the phenomenon of 'narrative drift' through in-depth analysis of twentieth-century novels and films. Combining feminist theories and structural narratology, Devereux Herbeck illustrates the ways in which evidence and/or admissions of doubt by narrative entities in works featuring wandering women disrupt conventions of continuity, coherence, and authority and thereby forces the story in new, unexpected directions. "
Wandlungen des Mythos: Eine Untersuchung zur impliziten Geschichtsphilosophie der Amazonas-Trilogie Alfred Döblins
by Claudia CippitelliMit seinem Geschichtsromanzyklus "Amazonas", dessen Handlung eine Zeitspanne von rund Vierjahrhunderten umfasst – von den Ereignissen rund um die Eroberung Südamerikas im 16. Jahrhundert bis hin zu der Zeit des pränationalsozialistischen Deutschlands –, führt Alfred Döblin den Leser auf eine Reise durch die verschiedenen Phasen der Entwicklungsgeschichte der menschlichen Zivilisation. Claudia Cippitelli liest Döblins Geschichtsdarstellung als durchgehendes Wandeln des Mythischen und zeigt die Art und Weise, wie diese Evolution des Mythischen auf formaler Ebene realisiert wird. Durch die Untersuchung der textimmanenten Romanpoetik setzt sie sich zum Ziel, die Merkmale und Grundpfeiler der Geschichtsphilosophie festzulegen, die "Amazonas" implizit sind. Dabei steht im Mittelpunkt ihrer Arbeit die Auffassung, dass Döblin durch seine dichterische Darstellung der Weltgeschichte über den Anspruch der Zivilisation reflektiert, eine Wahrheit zu stiften und über die Gewalt, die auf der Basis dieses illusorischen Wahrheits- und Objektivitätsanspruches erzeugt wird.
Wandlungsorientiertes Kommunikationsmanagement: Zu Einer Strategie Der Wandlung Statt Handlung (Forschung und Praxis an der FHWien der WKW)
by Peter DietrichUnser Verständnis von Kommunikationsmanagement ist stark instrumentell geprägt. Diesem Modus der Weltbeherrschung wird in diesem Buch die chinesisch inspirierte Idee der Weltanpassung gegenübergestellt. Statt der vom definierten Ziel rückwärts gedachten Planung und Umsetzung einer idealen Strategie, wird ausgehend vom aktuellen Situationspotential ein vorwärtsorientierter Managementmodus vorgeschlagen. Dieser Modus realisiert sich nicht über aktivistische Handlungen, sondern über diskrete und indirekte Wandlungen.Im Zentrum des wandlungsorientierten Kommunikationsmanagements stehen die Identifikation und Berücksichtigung der Sinn- und Bedeutungsstrukturen von fünf unterschiedlichen Lebenswelten. Deren prägende Frames und Narrative werden detailliert herausgearbeitet und bieten konkrete Ansatzpunkte für die Umsetzung in allen Phasen des wandlungsorientierten Kommunikationsmanagements – von der Analyse, über die Strategieentwicklung bis hin zur Operationalisierung.
Wangari Speaks Out (Speak Out)
by null Wangari MaathaiWangari Maathai was the first African woman and first environmentalist to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. In 1977 in Kenya, she started the Green Belt Movement. Wangari’s goals had been to use tree planting to restore the environment while providing income and resources to African women. The group’s objectives broadened to the protection of human and environmental rights, civic education, and the promotion of democratic values while valuing the cultural heritage of Africa. The GBM has now planted tens of millions of trees. In her acceptance speech, Wangari explains that “the state of any country’s environment is a reflection of the kind of governance in place, and without good governance there can be no peace.” The efforts of the GBM and other organizations led to the peaceful transition to a democratic society in Kenya, and the tree became a symbol of the democratic struggle. Her speech is strikingly illustrated and followed by an analysis written by Laia de Ahumada. The Speak Out series publishes the most inspiring speeches of our times, then deconstructs them to give young readers a deeper understanding of global issues and the power of language to influence them. Key Text Features biographical information definitions explanation facts headings historical context illustrations informational note Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.2 Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.3 Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.6 Determine an author's point of view or purpose in a text and explain how it is conveyed in the text. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.9 Compare and contrast one author's presentation of events with that of another (e.g., a memoir written by and a biography on the same person).
The Waning of the Middle Ages
by Johan HuizingaThis classic study of art, life, and thought in France and the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ranks as one of the most perceptive analyses of the medieval period. A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but a consummation of the old.Among other topics, the author examines the violent tenor of medieval life, the idea of chivalry, the conventions of love, religious life, the vision of death, the symbolism that pervaded medieval life, and aesthetic sentiment. We view the late Middle Ages through the psychology and thought of artists, theologians, poets, court chroniclers, princes, and statesmen of the period, witnessing the splendor and simplicity of medieval life, its courtesy and cruelty, its idyllic vision of life, despair and mysticism, religious, artistic, and practical life, and much more. Long regarded as a landmark of historical scholarship, The Waning of the Middle Ages is also a remarkable work of literature. Of its author, the New York Times said, "Professor Huizinga has dressed his imposing and variegated assemblage of facts in the colorful garments characteristic of novels, and he parades them from his first page to the last in a vivid style."An international success following its original publication in 1919 and subsequently translated into several languages, The Waning of the Middle Ages will not only serve as an invaluable reference for students and scholars of medieval history but will also appeal to general readers and anyone fascinated by life during the Middle Ages.
The Waning of the Middle Ages
by Johan HuizingaThis classic study of art, life, and thought in France and the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ranks as one of the most perceptive analyses of the medieval period. A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but a consummation of the old.Among other topics, the author examines the violent tenor of medieval life, the idea of chivalry, the conventions of love, religious life, the vision of death, the symbolism that pervaded medieval life, and aesthetic sentiment. We view the late Middle Ages through the psychology and thought of artists, theologians, poets, court chroniclers, princes, and statesmen of the period, witnessing the splendor and simplicity of medieval life, its courtesy and cruelty, its idyllic vision of life, despair and mysticism, religious, artistic, and practical life, and much more. Long regarded as a landmark of historical scholarship, The Waning of the Middle Ages is also a remarkable work of literature. Of its author, the New York Times said, "Professor Huizinga has dressed his imposing and variegated assemblage of facts in the colorful garments characteristic of novels, and he parades them from his first page to the last in a vivid style."An international success following its original publication in 1919 and subsequently translated into several languages, The Waning of the Middle Ages will not only serve as an invaluable reference for students and scholars of medieval history but will also appeal to general readers and anyone fascinated by life during the Middle Ages.
The Waning of the Middle Ages
by Johan HuizingaThis classic study of art, life, and thought in France and the Netherlands during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ranks as one of the most perceptive analyses of the medieval period. A brilliantly creative work that established the reputation of Dutch historian John Huizinga (1872-1945), the book argues that the era of diminishing chivalry reflected the spirit of an age and that its figures and events were neither a prelude to the Renaissance nor harbingers of a coming culture, but a consummation of the old.Among other topics, the author examines the violent tenor of medieval life, the idea of chivalry, the conventions of love, religious life, the vision of death, the symbolism that pervaded medieval life, and aesthetic sentiment. We view the late Middle Ages through the psychology and thought of artists, theologians, poets, court chroniclers, princes, and statesmen of the period, witnessing the splendor and simplicity of medieval life, its courtesy and cruelty, its idyllic vision of life, despair and mysticism, religious, artistic, and practical life, and much more. Long regarded as a landmark of historical scholarship, The Waning of the Middle Ages is also a remarkable work of literature. Of its author, the New York Times said, "Professor Huizinga has dressed his imposing and variegated assemblage of facts in the colorful garments characteristic of novels, and he parades them from his first page to the last in a vivid style."An international success following its original publication in 1919 and subsequently translated into several languages, The Waning of the Middle Ages will not only serve as an invaluable reference for students and scholars of medieval history but will also appeal to general readers and anyone fascinated by life during the Middle Ages.