Frank Ankersmit is Professor of Intellectual History and Historical Theory at the University of Groningen. He obtained his doctorate with the thesis Narrative Logic (1983). In 1990 he published The Navel of History, followed in 1993 by his inaugural lecture entitled The Historical Experience. Other books by Ankersmit include History and Tropology (1994), Aesthetic Politics (1997), Historical Interpretation (2001) and Political Interpretation (2002).
(Historische Uitgeverij, 2005, 480 pages)
In Sublime Historical Experience, philosopher of history Frank Ankersmit takes up where the famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga left off. When he saw an exhibition of paintings by Flemish Primitives in 1902, Huizinga was so overwhelmed by a sense of direct contact with the past that it prompted him to think about what really connects us with earlier times. This ‘historical experience’ inspired his great study The Waning of the Middle Ages.
