) While it is difficult to fix precise dates to the Fall of Rome on one hand and the beginning of the Renaissance on the other, one thing is sure: referring to the time period as the Dark Ages ignores a rich history that includes innovations in art, architecture, fashion, the production of illuminated manuscripts, public spectacle, and cookery. However, some academics still make dark connotations when writing about medieval Europe. Historian Johan Huizingas influential book, Autumn of the Middle Ages, for instance, persistently employs the image of decay and decrepitude when he refers to life in fourteenth and fifteenth century France and the Netherlands. Even England, he claims, continued to hold onto disintegrating traditions well into the Renaissance. Many medievalists have contested this perspective in their works, as I will attempt to do through the examination of an often overlooked aspect of medieval feasting in France and England between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries known as subtleties. Elaborate edible sculptures produced in noble households, these creations often took the shape of human or animal figures but could
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