Gothic language

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Gothic. Architectural style, properly called Pointed, that evolved in Europe (starting with France) from the late C12 until C16, even lingering until C17 and C18 in some places (e.g. Oxford and certain provincial areas). As its correct name suggests, it is the architecture of the pointed arch, pointed rib-vaults, piers with clusters of shafts, deep buttresses (some of the flying type), window-tracery, pinnacles, spires, battlements, and a soaring verticality. While Ancient Egyptian and Greek architecture is columnar and trabeated, Gothic is arcuated, giving an impression of dynamic thrust and counter-thrust. Certain elements of Gothic church architecture, such as the triforium, clerestorey, and Orders found in doorways, had developed in Romanesque architecture. Pointed rib-vaults had been used in Burgundy and Durham, while half-arches or half-barrel-vaults used as buttresses were exploited by English and French Romanesque builders. Fully developed Gothic, however, was not a matter of eclectic motifs being gathered together: it was a remarkably coherent style of logical arcuated forms in which forces were expressed and resisted, and non-structural walls were dissolved into huge areas of glazed window.

First Pointed (Early English) Gothic was used from the end of C12 to the end of C13, though most of its characteristics were present in the lower part of the chevet of the Abbey Church of St-Denis, near Paris (c.1135–44). Windows were first of all lancets, but later contained elementary tracery of the plate type (see tracery), then got larger, divided into lights by means of Geometrical bar-tracery. Once First Pointed evolved with Geometrical tracery it became known as Middle Pointed. Second Pointed work of C14 saw an ever-increasing invention in bar-tracery of the Curvilinear, Flowing, and Reticulated type, where the possibilities of the ogee form were fully exploited in canopies, tracery, and niches, culminating in the Flamboyant style (from c.1375) of the Continent. Second Pointed was relatively short-lived in England, and was superseded by Perpendicular (or Third Pointed) from c.1332, although the two styles overlapped for some time. On the Continent, however (where Perpendicular Gothic was unknown), lace-like patterns of tracery evolved, and churches of great height were erected with highly complex vaulting, as at the Church of St Barbara, Kutná Hora, Bohemia (1512). The Gothic style embraced a complete system of dynamic structure with developed geometries and daring experiments with stone, especially in the final flowering of Flamboyant in Central Europe. Although Gothic was superseded by a revival of interest in the language of Classicism from the Renaissance period, it enjoyed a widespread and scholarly revival in C19. See also gothic revival.

Bibliography

Branner (1965);
Colvin (1999);
Frankl (1960, 2000);
Grodecki (1986);
H. Osborne (1970);
J. Parker (1850);
Rickman (1848);
Toman (ed.) (1998);
Viollet-le-Duc (1875);

Gothic. Style of architecture and art that succeeded Romanesque and prevailed in Europe (particularly northern Europe) from the mid-12th century to the 16th century. Like many other stylistic labels, the word was originally a term of abuse; it was coined by Italian artists of the Renaissance to denote the type of medieval architecture they condemned as barbaric (implying, quite wrongly, that this architecture was created by the Gothic tribes who had destroyed the classical art of the Roman Empire). The Gothic style is still characterized chiefly in terms of architecture—in particular by the use of pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses. None of these features was first used in the Gothic period (they are all found in late Romanesque architecture), but when employed together they created a new type of skeletal structure and a sense of graceful resilience that was very different in spirit from the massive solidity of Romanesque buildings.

By extension, the term ‘Gothic’ has also been applied to the ornament, sculpture, and painting of the period in which Gothic architecture was built; it has less precise meaning in these contexts, although a swaying elegance is often considered typical of Gothic figures, which are generally much more naturalistic and less remote than those of the Romanesque period. There were great sculptural ensembles (particularly around portals) at several Gothic cathedrals, but the most characteristic sculptural product of the age is perhaps the standing figure of the Virgin and Child, notably in ivory. In late Gothic Germany carving in limewood reached great heights of beauty and elaboration. Gothic pictorial art is seen at its best in manuscript illumination and in stained glass. Panel painting came more into its own with the development of the late branch of the style known as International Gothic, which flourished at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries. Among the other arts that flourished in the period were embroidery (see opus anglicanum) and tapestry.

The Gothic Revival is the name given to a fashion involving the reintroduction of Gothic forms in architecture and associated arts. It began in the mid-18th century, in a fairly light-hearted way, medieval forms being used for their picturesque qualities, in a Rococo spirit, with no regard for archaeological accuracy. However, the movement became much more serious in tone and developed into a major strand in 19th-century art.

Gothic of or in the style of architecture prevalent in western Europe in the 12th–16th centuries (and revived in the mid 18th to early 20th centuries), characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses, together with large windows and elaborate tracery. English Gothic architecture is divided into Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular.

The word comes via French or late Latin from Gothi ‘the Goths’, and was used in the 17th and 18th centuries to mean ‘not classical’ (i.e. not Greek or Roman), and hence to refer to medieval architecture which did not follow classical models and a typeface based on medieval handwriting.
gothic novel an English genre of fiction popularized in the 18th to early 19th centuries by Mrs Radcliffe and others, characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and horror and having a pseudo-medieval setting; in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818), the heroine Catherine Morland's fondness for such novels leads her to suspect her lover's father of having murdered his wife.
Gothic revival the reintroduction of a Gothic style of architecture towards the middle of the 19th century.
Gothic type a typeface with lettering derived from the angular style of handwriting with broad vertical downstrokes used in western Europe from the 13th century, including Fraktur and black-letter typefaces.

Goth·ic / ˈgä[unvoicedth]ik/ • adj. 1. of or relating to the Goths or their extinct East Germanic language, which provides the earliest manuscript evidence of any Germanic language (4th–6th centuries ad). 2. of or in the style of architecture prevalent in western Europe in the 12th–16th centuries , characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses, together with large windows and elaborate tracery. 3. (also pseudoarchaic Gothick) belonging to or redolent of the Dark Ages; portentously gloomy or horrifying: 19th-century Gothic horror. 4. (of lettering) of or derived from the angular style of handwriting with broad vertical downstrokes used in western Europe from the 13th century, including Fraktur and black-letter typefaces. 5. (gothic) of or relating to goths or their rock music. • n. 1. the language of the Goths. 2. the Gothic style of architecture. 3. Gothic type. DERIVATIVES: Goth·i·cal·ly / -ik(ə)lē/ adv. Goth·i·cism / ˈgä[unvoicedth]əˌsizəm/ n.

Gothic. Style of architecture and art that succeeded Romanesque and prevailed in Europe (particularly northern Europe) from the mid-12th century to the 16th century. Like many other stylistic labels, the word was originally a term of abuse; it was coined by Italian artists of the Renaissance to denote the type of medieval architecture they condemned as barbaric (implying, quite wrongly, that this architecture was created by the Gothic tribes who had destroyed the classical art of the Roman empire). The Gothic style is still characterized chiefly in terms of architecture—in particular by the use of pointed arches, flying buttresses, and elaborate tracery. By extension, however, the term ‘Gothic’ is applied to the ornament, sculpture, and painting of the period in which Gothic architecture was built; it has less precise meaning in these contexts, although a swaying elegance is often considered typical of Gothic figures, which are generally much more naturalistic and less remote than those of the Romanesque period.

Gothic language dead language belonging to the now extinct East Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages ). Gothic has special value for the linguist because it was recorded several hundred years before the oldest surviving texts of all the other Germanic languages (except for a handful of earlier runic inscriptions in Old Norse). Thus it sheds light on an older stage of a Germanic language and on the development of Germanic languages in general. The earliest extant document in Gothic preserves part of a translation of the Bible made in the 4th cent. AD by Ulfilas , a Gothic bishop. This translation is written in an adaptation of the Greek alphabet, supposedly devised by the bishop himself, which was later discarded.

Bibliography: See J. Wright, Grammar of the Gothic Language and the Gospel of St. Mark (2d ed. 1954).

Gothic. An architectural style in N. Europe from early 12th cent. to 16th, and, as Gothic revival, in 19th cent. Thence it is applied to literature and religion to denote the opaquely mysterious—to some, grotesque.

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