Ghost , Horror and Mystery Stories
From medieval cathedrals to moody (or pretending to be) teenagers, to films, novels and computer games, the word Gothic, the Gothic sensibility, has been with us a long time. The first Goths were Germanic tribes forced into the Roman Empire by the ferocious Huns advancing towards Europe from the east. You might say they came originally as refugees, but they were part of the mass migrations that contributed (a bit) to the fall of Rome in the West.
So, when Renaissance writers on architecture were looking for an abusive term to describe several centuries of a style they despised, they picked on the Goths. After all, the Goths had ‘destroyed Rome’ and replaced the purity of Classical styles with their ‘barbaric’ pointy arches, coloured windows and fussy decoration. Of course, the cathedral style that began in medieval France had nothing to do with the Goths, but the name stuck.
Moving on to the eighteenth century, a new kind of emotional, romantic literature appeared. It mixed in a whole stew of ever-popular fascinations such as sex, death, bats, fear and virgins. As the setting was often the tumble-down remains of the original architectural style, the name Gothic was applied from the beginning and has remained as a shorthand for a wide range of literary genres. The Victorian Gothic Revival, a building style that is still all around us, helped preserve that familiar sensibility.
So anything with ghosts, blood, graveyards, sickly young women, spooky music, Halloween and all its cheesy paraphernalia, can all be labelled Gothic.
Suggested Reading:
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| Seduced by Twillight: the allure and contradictory messages of the popular saga by Natalie Wilson (2011) |
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| American gothic culture: an Edinburgh companion, edited by Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam (2017) |
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| The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1998) |
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