Heijinhaha's Research On Historiography

The objective of this thesis is to analysis the historical thought of the world-renown Dutch historian John Huizinga.The academic research on Huizinga's conception of history began to emerge after his life with a symbolic peak in the 100 th anniversary of his birth in 1972.In recent decades,his achievement in the domains of art history and culture history has been gradually recognized.The deep understanding of historical material and their wide use of Huizinga enable him the capability of cross-discipline research.Huizinga also explored the research methodology of using images as historical material,therefore pave the way for an important and unique approach of research in art history.In the meantime,in his important article of Huizinga,‘Huizinga and The Renaissance of Flemish Arts',one of the most famous art historian Frances Haskell took stock of the development processes of “visualize history”.He further recognized the sharp perspective of Huizinga to the form of history and culture.He believes that the thinking and reflection of Huizinga with regard to historical methodology had a unique path of art history research.The thesis has four parts in unfolding its research on the historical thoughts of Huizinga.The first part mainly reviews the European historical research from 19 th to 20 th century and the impact of various schools to Huizinga,including the core parts that inspired his thinking.It was the Von Ranke School which ignited the wave of scientific positivism in the 19 th century that inspired the thinking of Huizinga of history and science.The perspective of “history is reviving” of Michelet was also deeply rooted in the historical thoughts of Huizinga.He observed the mistake of the point of “social psychology” while recognizing the classification of “culture ages” of Lamprecht.The analysis of the medieval spirit trend of Burkhardt posed the foremost inspiration on Huizinga.Nevertheless,he still found some deficiencies of Burkhardt's theory.It was nothing else but the cautionary approach of Huizinga in observing the historical schools of the 19 th century that helped him to apperceive the fundamental problem of various methodology.The second part describes the profile of the historical thought of Huizinga.Firstly,Huizinga thought that history is an intelligent activity.In another word,it was his perspective that the purpose of history was not to recover it,but rather to understand and approach it.Secondly,Huizinga believes,as being deeply affected by impressionism,that the capability of aesthetic perception and imagination were both critical tools to getting close to history.Those two capabilities were exactly the characteristics of the “visionary” writing style of Huizinga.Meanwhile,he emphasized for many times in his important work <Men and Ideas>,that because of the difference in nature of historical knowledge and science in terms of fundament and essence,history should be in no way studied in a scientific way.In addition,this chapter further explored that how Huizinga use art works as historical material on the basis of Burkhardt's methodology and expand the research scope of art history to the intersection with culture history.Huizinga recognized the attitude of Burkhardt to culture history by including thinking pattern such as moral,value and mentality into culture history to redefine culture history and the content it should examine.The unique contribution of Huizinga to modern culture history was symbolled by his distinctive historical theory and methodology.The third part analyzed three of the most prevailing books of Huizinga to discover the development trend of his historical thought.<The Waning of the Middle Ages>mainly illustrated his breakthrough to the conclusion made by Burkhardt in defining the mainstream spirit of renaissance,complementing the missing part of Burkhardt's analysis of artworks.It therefore put forward Huizinga's conclusion that “the late Middle Ages was not so much a prelude to the future as an epoch of fading and decay”.In<Homo Ludens>,Huizinga investigated every aspects of culture with the methodology of anthropology to reach the conclusion that play had an important relationship with culture.Whilst <In the Shadow of Tomorrow>,Huizinga not only reviewed the past of culture history,but observed the declining of culture as an observer from the perspective of social critic and tried to find the right solution to resolve the crisis after analyzing the reasons behind.In those three work,the perspective of Huizinga with regard to culture history research had been changing therefor empower his analysis a special critical nature.The fourth part compiles the comments of later generations while endeavors to analyze the achievements and inadequacies of Huizinga's theory.The review of art historians to Huizinga's work is highlighted,in particular those from Haskell and Gombrich.