Book number 3. The Waning of the Middle Agesby J. Huizinga.
I started this last May, I think. Possibly even earlier. It's very enjoyable but also very dense and presupposes familiarity with a very great variety of medieval sources, most of which I'm completely unfamiliar with. (I've read the Decameron, the Canterbury Tales, a few other things from the time, and only a couple of books on the Middle Ages, my favorite being A Distant Mirrorby Barbara Tuchman.) So I know I missed out on many of the finer points.
The overall thrust of the book is a consideration of the forms of thought in culture in France and the Netherlands in the 1400s. Despite the fairly abstruse material, I found his writing lively and persuasive. He's very keen to stress the complexity of his subject and how over-simplified our conceptions of the Middle Ages are. Here's an example of an observation that I underlined.
"Symbolism at all times shows a tendency to become mechanical. Once accepted as a principal, it becomes a product, not of poetical enthusiasm only, but of subtle reasoning as well, and as such it grows to be a parasite clinging to thought, causing it to to degenerate."
Assertions like this are supported by numerous examples.
So, not light reading, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It's invigorating to eavesdrop on the musings of someone brilliant, deeply immersed in their subject, even if you can't always keep up.
