The Waxing of the Middle Ages: Revisiting Late Medieval France (The Early Modern Exchange)

"Johan Huizinga's much-loved and much-contested Autumn of the Middle Ages, first published in 1919, encouraged an image of the Late French Middle Ages as a flamboyant but empty period of decline and nostalgia. Many studies, particularly literary studies, have challenged Huizinga's perceptions of individual works or genres. Still, the vision of the Late French and Burgundian Middle Ages as a sad transitional phase between the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance persists. Yet, a series of exceptionally significant cultural developments mark the period. The Waxing of the Middle Ages sets out to provide a rich, complex, and diverse study of these developments and to reassert that late medieval France is crucial in its own right. The collection argues for an approach that views the late medieval period not as an afterthought, or a blind spot, but as a period that is key in understanding the fluidity of time, traditions, culture, and history. Each essay explores some "cultural form," to borrow Huizinga's expression, to expose the false divide that has dominated modern scholarship"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Introduction: Working with Huizinga’s Legacy / Tracy Adams and Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier 8 1. Color Values, or Life with Grey / Andrea Tarnowski 28 2. Jean de Meun and Visual Eroticism in Fifteenth-Century Culture / Stephen G. Nichols 51 3. Jean Chartier and the End of the Historical Tradition at Saint-Denis / Derek R. Whaley 79 4. “Presenten sa personne”: Identity and Celebrity in Fifteenth-Century Franco-Burgundian Literature / Helen Swift 101 5. Rethinking Patronage in Late Medieval France: Networks of Influence in Manuscript Production and Reception / Anneliese Pollock Renck 117 6. The Rhétoriqueurs and the Transition from Manuscript to Print / Cynthia J. Brown 131 7. François Villon and France: Emotional (De)constructions / Charles-Louis Morand-Métivier 148 8. La Belle Dame of Chartier Manuscripts: Beinecke 1216, the Clumber Park Chartier / Joan E. McRae 165 9. Agnès Sorel, Celebrity, and Late Medieval French Visual Culture / Tracy Adams 196 10. No Job for a Man: Fifteenth-Century France and the Invention of the Institution of Female Regency / Zita Eva Rohr 220 Conclusion: French Historians in Search of the Historiographical Identity of the French Fifteenth Century / Franck Collard (translated by Tracy Adams) 242 Bibliography 258 Contributors 284 Index 288