Table of Contents

Reading Huizinga - 2[-]Contents - 10[-]Preface - 12[-]Introduction - 14[-]LIFE AND WOR K - 20[-]Life - 22[-]Work - 42[-]READING AND WRITING - 60[-]Reading - 62[-]Writing - 79[-]CONTRAST AND HARMONY - 96[-]Contrast - 98[-]Harmony - 114[-]PASSION AND SYNAESTHES IA - 130[-]Passion - 132[-]Synaesthesia - 149[-]METHOD AND MYSTICISM - 168[-]Method - 170[-]Mysticism - 187[-]EXTRAPOLATON AND METAMORP HOSIS - 204[-]Extrapolation - 206[-]Metamorphosis - 221[-]CODA - 236[-]Historical greatness - 238[-]Select bibli ography - 246[-]notes - 248[-]index of persons - 258

About the Author

Willem Otterspeer is professor of history at Leiden University.

Reviews

Willem Otterspeer's Reading Huizinga takes its own readers on a magical tour of the circumstances and qualities that can help to appreciate the mind and spirit of a man who wrote such enduring classics of the twentieth century as The Waning of the Middle Ages and Homo Ludens. With graceful succinctness this book guides those who explore it to an understanding of themost famous Dutch historian. Like its subject, it creates a portrait by assembling many small, often contrasting, details.[-]It aims not to arrive at conventional biography and even less at history of historiography, but rather at a more elusive essence--what makes great writing endure.[-]Jan Ziolkowski, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard University