Analogies to art in French prose fiction of the Fifteenth Century

Abstract

If I were to heed the warnings of the estheticians, I would not only abstain from comparing French literature and art o£ the fifteenth century but would also condemn the grandiose attempt of Johan Huizinga who started such parallels in his fundamental book of 1924, The Waning of the Middle Ages. I don’t know whether Huizinga’s great historical in- tuition would have been helped by a greater theoretical underpinning or methodological rigor but I do know that in his two chapters called "Verbal and plástic expression compared” Huizinga has shown that their mutual elucidation proves clearly that the Middle Ages with its waning symbolism has come to a cióse and that its naturalism has nothing to do as yet with Renaissance, because it is an analytical, descriptive, illus- trative and not an emphatic and evocative naturalism; there are no great ideas in this epoch but a pictorical thinking instead. Even going into greater details Huizinga remains convincing in literature and art.