Gothic

Illustration from the frontispiece of the 1831 edition of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein" by Theodor von Holst

Gothic is the term used to describe things pertaining to the Gothic people, traditionally thought to have originated in northern Europe and moved south towards the borders of the Roman Empire in the second century. Eventually they occupied territories in modern Germany, Spain and Italy. They became a byword for northern barbarism and from the sixteenth century their name was given to the dominant architectural and artistic style of the late medieval period, which had originated in France in the twelfth century. The style became idealised in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries within Romanticism, leading to the architectural Gothic revival, beginning in Britain but spreading to continental Europe and North America, by which medieval buildings were restored and large numbers of civil, ecclesiastical and educational buildings built in a medieval style. The creation of literary works that employed such late medieval backdrops to explore dark aspects of human nature and the supernatural led to the creation of Gothic fiction, which was the origin of the modern horror genre in books, film, T.V. and more recently video games. From the 1980s these works provided the visual and atmospheric inspiration for the Gothic subculture, producing Gothic music, as well as fashions, fiction and events.

Goths

The Goths were a heterogeneous East Germanic tribe. The Roman historian Jordanes claimed that the Goths arrived from Scandza, believed to be somewhere in modern Götaland (Sweden), and that a Gothic population had crossed the Baltic Sea before the 2nd century, lending their name to the region of Gothiscandza, believed to be the lower Vistula region in modern Pomerelia (Poland).^[1] The archaeological Wielbark (Willenberg) culture is associated with the arrival of the Goths and their subsequent agglomeration with the indigenous population. But the reliability of Jordanes, who wrote in the 6th century, is disputed,^[2] and there is also no archaeological evidence for a substantial emigration from Scandinavia.^[3] From the mid-second century onward, it has been argued that groups of Goths started migrating to the south-east along the River Vistula, reaching Scythia at the coast of the Black Sea in modern Ukraine where they left their archaeological traces in the Chernyakhov culture.^[4] Throughout the third and fourth centuries, the Scythian Goths were divided into at least two distinct entities, the Thervingi and the Greuthungi, divided by the Dniester River.^[5] They repeatedly harried the Roman Empire during the Gothic Wars. In the late 4th century, the Huns invaded the Gothic region from the east. While many Goths were subdued and integrated into the Hunnic Empire, others were pushed toward the Roman Empire, sacking Rome in 410 AD.^[6] The Goths were converted to Christianity by the Arian (half-) Gothic missionary, Wulfila, who then found it necessary to leave Gothic country for Moesia, (modern Serbia, Bulgaria) with his congregation, where he translated the Bible into Gothic, devising a script for this purpose.^[7] In the fifth and sixth centuries, they became divided as the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, who established powerful successor-states of the Western Roman Empire in the Iberian peninsula and Italy.^[8] In Italy, the Ostrogothic Kingdom established by Theodoric the Great was defeated by the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire in the Gothic Wars (535-54).^[9] In Hispania, the Visigoths, which had converted to Catholicism by late sixth century, would survive until the early eighth century, when it fell to Islam after the Muslim conquest.^[10] The Gothic language and culture disappeared except for fragments in other cultures.^[11]

Art and architecture

The interior of the western end of Reims Cathedral

Originating in 12th-century France and lasting into the 16th century, the Gothic style, known during the period as "French work" (Opus Francigenum) became the dominant architectural and artistic form across western Europe.^[12] It first began to be referred to as Gothic during the latter part of the Renaissance as a stylistic insult to indicate northern barbarity, in opposition to the Latin Romanesque style.^[13] In architecture its characteristic features included the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress, allowing much taller, more elegant and light filled buildings.^[14] Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and parish churches of Europe.^[15] It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities, and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings.^[16]

Primary media in the Gothic period included sculpture, panel painting, stained glass, fresco and illuminated manuscript.^[17] The earliest Gothic art was monumental sculpture, on the walls of Cathedrals and abbeys. Christian art was often typological in nature (see Medieval allegory), showing the stories of the New Testament and the Old Testament side by side.^[18] Saints' lives were often depicted. Images of the Virgin Mary changed from the Byzantine iconic form to a more human and affectionate mother, cuddling her infant, swaying from her hip, and showing the refined manners of a well-born aristocratic courtly lady.^[19] Secular art came in to its own during this period with the rise of cities, foundation of universities, increase in trade, the establishment of a money-based economy and the creation of a bourgeois class who could afford to patronize the arts and commission works resulting in a proliferation of paintings and illuminated manuscripts.^[20] Increased literacy and a growing body of secular vernacular literature encouraged the representation of secular themes in art. With the growth of cities, trade guilds were formed and artists were often required to be members of a painters' guild—as a result, because of better record keeping, more artists are known to us by name in this period than any previous, some artists were even so bold as to sign their names.^[21]

Revival

Notable Neo-Gothic edifices: top - Palace of Westminster, London; left - Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh; right - Sint-Petrus-en-Pauluskerk, Ostend.

The Gothic Revival was an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England, arising out the Romanticism.^[22] Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms in contrast to the classical styles prevalent at the time.^[23] In England it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism.^[22] He went on to produce important Gothic buildings such as Cathedrals at Birmingham and Southwark and the British House of Parliament in the 1840s.^[24] Large numbers of existing English churches had features such as crosses, screens and stained glass (removed at the Reformation), restored or added, and most new Anglican and Catholic churches were built in the Gothic style.^[25] Viollet-le-Duc was a leading figure in the movement in France, restoring the entire walled city of Carcassonne as well as Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle in Paris.^[24] In America Ralph Adams Cram was a leading force in American Gothic, with his most ambitious project the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York (claimed to be the largest Cathedral in the world), as well as Collegiate Gothic buildings at Princeton Graduate College.^[24] On a wider level the wooden Carpenter Gothic churches and houses were built in large numbers across North America in this period.^[26]

Fiction

In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel, often dealing with dark themes in human nature against medieval backdrops and with elements of the supernatural.^[27] Beginning with Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, it was perfected as a literary form by Ann Radcliffe in novels such as The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).^[28] It also included Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), which helped found the modern horror genre.^[29] This helped create the dark romanticism or American Gothic of authors like Edgar Allan Poe in works including "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) and Nathanial Hawthorne in "The Minister's Black Veil" (1836) and "The Birth-Mark" (1843).^[30] This is turn influenced American novelists like Herman Melville in works such as Moby Dick (1851).^[31] Early Victorian Gothic novels included Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847).^[32] The genre was revived and modernised toward the end of the century with works like Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).^[33] From the twentieth century Gothic fiction has been seen as dividing into a number of sub-genres, including Southern Gothic,^[34] Suburban Gothic,^[35] Southern Ontario Gothic,^[36] and Tasmanian Gothic.^[37] Since the 1980s gothic horror fiction has revived as a genre, with series of novels like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles,^[38] and Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls.^[39]

Horror film and TV

Max Schreck as Count Orlok in a promotional photo for the film Nosferatu (1922)

Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Nosferatu (1922), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941).^[40] After World War II, emphasis shifted to films that more often drew inspiration from the insecurities of life, utilising new technology and dividing into three the sub-genres of horror-of-personality, the horror-of-Armageddon and the horror-of-the-demonic.^[41] The last sub-genre may be seen as a modernized transition from the earliest horror films, expanding on their emphasis on supernatural agents that bring horror to the world.^[42] However, during the late 1950s and early 1960s the British company Hammer Film Productions enjoyed huge international success from Technicolor films involving classic Gothic horror characters, often starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, such as The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula (1958), and The Mummy (1959) and many sequels.^[39] While purely gothic elements in horror entered periods of decline in film they were successfully adapted by the 1960s to TV with series like Dark Shadows which helped preserve the genre,^[39] while The Addams Family and The Munsters used gothic stereotypes for camp comedy.^[43] The 1983 vampire film The Hunger provided a highly influential modernised and urbanised version of gothic culture.^[39] The same themes have been revisited periodically in films like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1994), which at least purported to produce work closer to the original Gothic source material.^[44] From the late 1980s a number of films drew on dark city landscapes to produce urban gothic including Batman (1989), The Crow (1994), Seven (1995) and From Hell (2001).^[45]

Subculture

A Goth couple.

Gothic subculture began in the United Kingdom during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre, pioneered by bands such as Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Sisters of Mercy.^[39] It spread to continental Europe and North America in the 1980s.^[39] The goth subculture, although going through periods of decline, as in the late 1980s, has enjoyed several revivals and has continued to diversify and develop, with active subcultures in places such as London, Portland, Oregon, New Orleans, Toronto.^[46]

Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from 19th-century Gothic literature along with horror films and to a lesser extent the BDSM culture.^[47] The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion, whether or not all individuals who share those tastes are in fact members of the goth subculture. Gothic music has spawned a number of different styles and hybrids, including Coldwave, Ethereal Wave, Gothic metal and Neoclassical.^[48] Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punk, androgynous, Victorian, some Renaissance and Medieval style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with black attire, makeup and hair.^[49] Modern gothic novels and films, particularly the works of Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite, have been highly influential on the delevlopment of the sub-culture.^[39] Gothic subculture has also become incorporated into works of fiction, including graphic novel The Crow and role playing games, including Vampire: The Masquerade, which has also been adapted into two video games.^[50]

Notes