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Book reviews for "Payton,_Rodney_J." sorted by average review score:

A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's Inferno (American University Studies Series II: Romance Languages and Literature, vOl 191)
Published in Paperback by Peter Lang Publishing (1992)
Author: Rodney J. Payton
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An illuminating guide!
A Modern Readers Guide changed my life! By far the best resource for understanding Dante. A must read!

The BESTguide to the Inferno around!
This book provides a fantastic guide to the Inferno. It made reading the Inferno 100% more meaningful and enjoyable for me. An absolute must for anyone reading the Inferno!!


The Autumn of the Middle Ages
Published in Paperback by University of Chicago Press (Trd) (1997)
Authors: Johan Huizinga, Rodney J. Payton, and Ulrich Mammitzsch
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Detailed Analysis of 15th Century France and Holland
First, I must admit that I am not a Middle Ages scholar, and this book is the first one I have read about Middle Ages culture. Having said that, I thouroughly enjoyed Huizinga's book about life in France and Holland during the 15th Century. I am glad that I put the effort into reading this book. I say effort, because Huizinga's analysis is not light reading. No, it is a detailed analysis of Late Middle Ages culture - art, literature, religion, and lifestyles are all covered at great length. Much of it is fascinating when viewed in contrast with the way we live today.

This translation of the book seems solid. It includes a lot of text from original documents, many in French, or Latin, but includes English translations in the footnotes section. A few parts of the book were more difficult to work through than others, but in the end I felt like I had gained a new insight into European history. I particularly think that Huizinga's thoughts about the Christian church in this era leading to the reformation make for fascinating reading.

If you are interested in what life in the late middle ages may have been like then I highly recommend this book. Keep in mind that it is a historical exposition about this era, not a textbook treatment full of facts. Personally, it has kindled enough interest in this subject for me to warrant further study- hopefully it will do the same for you.

This book is of major importance to Dutch history-writing
This book is written in a grotesque and literary manner. Johan Huizinga, the Great Dutch pre-War historian, possesses large cultural acknowledge and a huge historical skill. Comparisons can be made with Burckhardt's book about the Renaissance. If you want to know something about the later Middle Ages, especially in France and the Burgundian Countries (Low Countries), you must read this book for fully understanding the cultural-historical aspects of human medieval life and thought.

Interesting and Exquisite.....But is it for real?
My problem with this book is the same that has been expressed by a couple other reviewers: to wit, does Huizinga really know what was going through the hearts and minds of the people in the particular era and region with which the book deals, as the author and his proselytes claim? My answer is, in a word,-No. No book can. History is an elusive subject under the best of circumstances.

Let me cut to the chase. Huizinga is really not so much interested in demarking the Middle Ages from the Renaissance. After one gets into the thick of things, it becomes quite obvious that what he's actually about is contrasting the Middle Ages (as he understands or imagines them) from his own historical milieu. I won't belabor the point: one citation will suffice. On page 235, Huizinga asseverates that, "There was no great truth of which the medieval mind was more certain than those words from the Corinthians, 'For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face.' They never forgot that everything would be absurd if it exhausted its meaning in its immediate function and form of manifestation, and that all things extend in an mportant way to the world beyond." How does he know? Did he conduct extensive interviews with illiterate serfs whose life expectancy was a fraction of ours and spent almost all their waking hours trying to put food in their bellies? - No, the worldview Huizinga describes above is one common to mystics and poets of all eras and climes. His very citation of the Corinthians subverts any notion that it was exclusive to the Netherlands in the Middle Ages.

Huizinga was essentially an artistic and poetic writer, and the insights one comes away with from his book are such as one might expect from one so gifted: textured and fascinating portraits of a time now lost. But they are just that, verbal pictures, calling to mind not so much Breughel or any of the other artists whose works are Plated in the middle of the book, but that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

This is an enchanting book and well worth the read. It's just that you may have to hang your critic's hat upon a medieval peg before sitting down to enjoy it. I trust you have one...a medieval peg that is.


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