Hiya! I'm a Dutch historian with some basic experience reading Huizinga and other authors from the early 20th century (my degree is in political history though). What edition of this work are you reading? There are several translations (ENG/FR/GER) from the early- to mid-1920s that are by modern standards quite impenetrable. A revised English translation exists from the 1990s, and an abridged version in Dutch was published as early as the 1970s. Depending on availability of any of those I strongly recommend going for the English translation from the 1990s.

As for Huizinga's argumentation in The Autumn of the Middle Ages; in his day and age he sought to overturn romantic ideas and idealisations of the late Middle Ages. In his understanding courtly life (and not per sé life in general) suffered heavily from the growing brutalisation of society from the mid-14th century onward. He argues that the 'stiffening' or increasing formalisation of courtly love, non-religious art, and other cultural output throughout the 14th and 15th century were a reaction to the virtual continual warfare that especially the Low Countries, Burgundian lands, and by extension the wider European neighbours of the HRE, England and France were enveloped in. He strongly rejected the notion that late Medieval Western Europe was in any way gearing towards the Renaissance in the same way as the Italian states, and instead proposes that it was a long period of nostalgia (or cultural tiredness/anti-innovativeness), political realism, and socio-cultural pessimism. These arguments were at the time well-received, and to my knowledge caused something of a revolution in historical thought regarding 'our' origins of the Renaissance here in the Netherlands.

Presently, however, Huizinga's Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (Dutch title, sorry, lovely archaic title) is extremely dated, and impossible to universalise to Western Europe in general. The main problem of Huizinga's work is that it draws extremely heavily on research into the Burgundian Circle of the HRE which at the time ruled the Low Countries. The Burgundians by modern historical standards are the wildcard among the Royal and Imperial states of Western Europe during the 14th-16th centuries, and is virtually impossible to meaningfully compare to its French or English contemporaries. It's therefore impossible to view Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen as a completely independent and realiable source in current historiography.

In my personal view it is one of the densest, most modern scientific attempts at explaining the origins of the history of the Netherlands from before 1945, written from a still supremely nationalist angle. Though it isn't overtly chauvinist, Huizinga's work is biased like that of most of his contemporaries, but still shows a high degree of scientific historical analysis which I feel has done much for the conduct and writing of history in my country and my language.

Hope this answers your question, and hmu if I can answer any related questions!

Hey there!

When I don't understand a book, the best way I start trying to piece things together is to look up reviews in academic journals.

In this case, Waning of the Middle Ages/Autumn of the Middle Ages (different translations have differently translated titles) is a MASSIVELY important book in medieval history, and it's also OLD. So you'll find a lot of not just reviews, but assessments of it from a century down the road. I'd recommend searching JSTOR, academia.edu, and something like site:tandfonline.com as some good places to start looking.

Good luck!