...Gothic Architecture can be viewed as the skyscrapers of the medieval era with the sheer height of the buildings and the slender windows and columns adding to the verticality of the buildings. In his book 'Gothic' Prof. Dr Bruno Klein enlightens the readers that Gothic Architecture was not entirely initiated with the construction of St. Denis by Abbot Sugar but rather played as major catalyst for the movement which had slowly started to appear in the late Romanesque movement. By instigating a search through Klein's work a better understanding of the Gothic movement can be achieved. This paper will discuss in detail factors that contributed towards the Gothic movement and how the movement was not initiated by the construction of St. Denise by Abbot Sugar but rather a few years before hand. By exploring factors such as political, social and cultural beliefs and values that influence the dramatic change that helped emerge the gothic movement and differ it from its predecessor. Aim of this paper is showcase and illuminate the differences between Gothic and Romanesque Architecture but also how past Architectural styles transcends over time rather than stop with the Architectural movement ends and moves to another. The fact that the founding stone of Gothic Architecture was laid on the july 14 1140 can be disputed (Toman and Bednorz 2007, pg 28). According to Prof. Dr. Bruno Klein the rebuilding of the choir of the Benedictine church of St. Denis was begun at the influence of Abbot...
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...The Gothic Cathedral Unit 3 AIU Online The Gothic Cathedral’s In 1163 was when Notre Dame Cathedral also known as Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris, “Our Lady of Paris”, was first started to build. The beautiful cathedral was mostly completed in 1250. Many different architects worked on the site, this would explain the different styles types and different heights of the west front and towers. The towers were finished in 1245 and the entire cathedral was finally finished around 1345. The building of the cathedral retells the stories from the Bible with its portals, stained glass and paintings. The sculpture and stained glass plays an important role of the French Gothic architecture. The enlarged round openings instead of normal arcades could be seen from the outside as a high Gothic style. The Eiffel tower is a popular monument in France but nothing like the Notre Dame Cathedral. With more than 13 million visitors each year, The Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the most popular monuments in Paris, even in all of France. Still to this day the Catholic Church is active and the cathedral plays a significance role in religious events. Before leaving for holy wars the crusaders would stop at the Notre Dame de Paris and pray. The Notre Dame de Paris has had an eventful history. The statues of the Saints on the west front were above the portals; they were mistaken for kings and taken down. Eugene Emmanuel Violett-le-Duc and Jean-Baptgiste-Antoine Lassus started the restoration...
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...The Gothic Age Possible Introduction Standing before a piece of Gothic art, whether it is a painting, sculpture or a cathedral, you are drawn to a visual exploration like none you have ever seen. Where does the art start and end? The style of Gothic art draws the eye's attention at every turn. A choir of medieval spiritual beliefs is told in art, singing harmoniously in a language from long ago, which eludes us at the frontier of our memory reminding us of stories told throughout the years. History of Gothic Art Gothic is the name given to the style of architecture, painting, and sculpture which flourished in Western Europe, mainly France and England, between the 12th and 15th centuries. The label of 'Gothic' was coined in Italy, during the Renaissance, as a derogatory reference to the art and architecture of these earlier centuries. The defamation was a comparison to the earlier Goth barbarians. Goths were an ancient Teutonic people, who were an important power in the Roman world from the 3rd to the 6th century AD. The entire Goth population divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, aligned themselves with the Roman Empire, and set out to conquer and rule. It is during this timeframe that the artistic influence of the Goths took hold and began to spread, mixing Gothic and Roman artistic styles. With the passing centuries, Gothic became more clearly associated with the closing era of the medieval age. In time, the separating point between...
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...The southern gothic style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the values of the American south. Two of the most iconic writers to use this style are Flannery O’ Conner and William Faulkner. O’Conner’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” which depicts a southern family’s demise at the hands of a ruthless murderer, and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” in which a well-to-do woman is discovered to have the rotting corpse of her lover in her bedroom, are two perfect examples of southern gothic stories. While both O’Conner and Faulkner use the southern gothic style, however, they use it to illuminate different aspects of southern culture. The most important and defining aspect of southern gothic writing is the use of macabre, or grotesque, events. Such events are easily identified in both stories. “A Rose for Emily, told through the eyes of an entire southern town, depicts a woman named Emily, who is the last remaining member of a once great family. The town watches as Emily grows more and more estranged as years pass. Eventually, when she dies alone, the town enters the house and is shocked to find the badly decomposed body of her lover, who had been assumed to have left Emily years before, in the bed of an upstairs room. Faulkner ends the story on a decidedly gruesome note, writing “Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible...
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...Comp 1 McGough 3/12/2015 The Gothic Novel In the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century, gothic fiction arose as a new genre in the literary field. Functioning as cult literature gothic literature compels readers to think, and really consider the immense emotion writers could stimulate. Often overly dramatic with its supernatural, horrific, and suspenseful material, this melancholy form of literature prompted the use of darkness and mystery in order to spawn feelings of obscurity, secrecy, and trepidation. Gothic literature operates as a pulp genre that was often seen as an intense type of romance with its stylized, non-realistic, idealized or emblematic tales presented in the form of an adventure through the use of a discovery quest. Yet its evocative powers of horror and terror explore the gratification and titillations of shockingly perverse. Before being applied to the context of a literary form the term gothic originally referred to an ancient Germanic tribe that derived from what is now known as southern Sweden, before migrating to the shores of the Baltic Sea known as the Goths. This tribe eventually split into two factions that would be known as the Visigoths or West Goths and the Ostrogoths or East Goths. Centuries would pass before the term gothic would once again emerge this time with a different meaning. Sometime during the renaissance Greco-Roman culture was rediscovered by Europeans. In this rediscovery the term “gothic” now referred to certain types of...
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...Grant Wood, American Gothic English Assignment American Gothic American Gothic is a classic American painting by Wood Grant. The traditional painting was created in the year 1930. Wood paints an image of two farmers in the Midwest. Due to time period that the painting was created in (1930s), American Gothic refers to the Great Depression. Wood paints the two farmers expressions with much importance. The man looks right at the viewer with strong determined eyes. He is holding his pitchfork with strength. The woman looks of to the left of the painting. Her expression portrays fear and sadness. Behind the two subjects is a house lit up by the afternoon sun. American Gothic is a very simple painting; two people and a house. The viewers eyes looks first at the man’s intense stare and then continues to wander around the painting. Wood's choice of clothing, hairstyle, color all play important rolls in determining the time setting and to give the painting an overall mood. First of all, the color scheme is very muted one. This gives the painting a depressing mood and a one- dimensional feeling. The many vertical and horizontal lines generate eye movement from pitchfork to the coat of the man on up to the faces of both figures to the window between them; then, as the roof angles, the viewer's eye is led toward the left and right with the roofs of the house and barn. The repetition of shape with the pitchfork and the window helps the viewer to see the...
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...“The role of women in the gothic genre is as victims, always subject to male authority.” Compare and contrast the extent to which this interpretation is relevant to your three chosen texts. “The wolf consumes red riding hood – what else can you expect if you talk to strange men, comments Perrault briskly. Let’s not bother our heads with the mysteries of sadomasochistic attraction” Angela Carter; Foreword to Perrault’s Short Stories. In much of today’s feminist writings, the Gothic era is frequently defined as a period in which the oppression of females was at its most intense. In response to fin de siècle anxieties of a social revolution in which gender stereotypes could be overhauled, gothic writers, it is claimed, sought to reassert cultural and gender norms – a reassertion which inevitably resulted in the oppression of women. In view of such contemporary analysis, it is thus all too tempting to offer a sweeping judgement of gothic literature as victimising, oppressive and misogynistic; Dracula’s “victims” are all “unambiguously women[1]”, Poe victimises through an “idealised and dehumanising image of women[2]”, while Carter is a “pseudo feminist” who merely “reinforces patriarchal views” with her “pornographic” writing[3]. Yet such views are largely artificial, and are primarily based on potted summaries of the above works, rather than a closer textual analysis. If one takes the definition of a victim as a being who is subject to the successful predatory actions of...
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...Gothic fiction combines the emotion of love, despair and horror. The genre continues to be a very successful genre of literature today and is widely used today for both entertainment and education purposes. For two centuries, G has gripped and frightens readers of different ages. During the eighteenth century England, Gothic had become synonymous with the Middle Ages. It was a period perceived as chaotic, unenlightened and superstitious. “Renaissance critics erroneously believed that Gothic architecture was created by Germanic tribes and regarded it as ugly and barbaric. This erroneous attribution continued through the eighteenth century.” (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/gothic/gothic.html) Horace Walpole first introduced...
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...The term 'gothic' has many different forms. The most important and original form is architecture during the medieval period. It starts out with the great cathedral, Saint-Denis, of Paris. Then the Westminster Abbey of London was built. These are characterized by their pointed arches and flying buttresses. Gothicism also came in the form of art. Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry, by the Limburg brothers, showed elegance through statements in the best known way of gothic art. This popular style of art is called manuscript illuminations. Manuscript illuminations are text followed by decoration, usually gold. During the mid-18th century, literature took a new step having the first gothic novel, "The Castle of Otranto," first published in 1764. This novel was combined with a horror and mystery genre (Martindale). Gothicism began to be apart of churches by having stained glass windows and pictures of biblical people. The style of nudity from Adam and Eve was also portrayed to be gothic. As Gothicism grew it rose to the 1980's and started a movement called punk, and later related to Fantasy Art. It then, in the 1990s, blossomed to what is called Neo-Gothic Art. It is inspired by Charles Alexander Moffat and is a period when the people wanted to express themselves as more than normal in a number of ways. A person of example would be Marilyn Manson, whose personal style and music is characterized as being "dark" and "mysterious" (Folkenroth). Characteristics of gothic novels have...
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...plans, why he made the plans for a more gothic approach and what it meant. Paragraph 3 The reason a royal styled approach was taken and why this is the case. It all ties up to looking at a better past and bringing it up to the present. Paragraph 4 How Barry and Pugin mixed to make the fine balance and the message that it symbolised. Paragraph 5 How the gothic style meant making a building as one in Pugins eyes. Describe how common hidden parts of a building were almost used as decoration. Also the way the rooms were built compared the classical tradition that was taking place at the time. Paragraph 6 / Conclusion The palace and the two ways that it was built are essentially 'tradition' and 'dissent'. Explain why. Option 1 Pugin and the Revival of the Gothic Tradition To what extent can ideas of tradition and dissent be applied to assist our understanding of the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster? The ideas of tradition and dissent have a clear involvement in how the Palace of Westminster ended up looking and how the designs were chosen and implicated. The religious choices, multiple connotations, elements of symbolism and the moving on from the traditional strict choice of 'classical' architecture are a combination of tradition and dissent that was intended to express that Britain is moving into a more positive new era. Pugin had a huge role to play in making sure that the new designs for the palace had a gothic theme to them. After the palace fire of...
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...Architecture in Society The Difference of Gothic Church and Jewish Synagogue In today’s society there are many forms of art; pictures, sculpture music and architecture to name a few. Architecture is defined in Merriam-Webster dictionary as: “the art or science of building; the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones.” Just look around, you can see art in many buildings of today. The most prominent architecture art forms are religion structures primarily churches. The history of church architecture divides itself into periods, and into countries or regions and by religious affiliation. There are many styles and structural difference in each church. Gothic architecture made of stone that has statues on the outside and several low towers and a low spire with a cross on top of it. The floor plan is often cross-shaped. The most prominent time period is Renaissance period namely the Gothic Style of Churches. These large, often ornate and architecturally prestigious buildings were dominant features of the towns and countryside in which they stood, they had elaborate ceilings, stain glass windows and structure that made them not only marvelous construction achievement’s but true art forms. The most famous and truly a piece of art that represents this time period is Chartres Cathedral one of the finest examples of the French High Gothic style. In contrast of Gothic Churches of yesteryear is the less...
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...Horace Walpole defined Gothic in 1736, as "'light, delicate, and rich to an extreme, full of whimsical and impertinent ornaments,'" as "'the irregular lightness and solemnity of Gothic.'" This definition of Gothic was incorporated into Gothick designs in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Fundamentally, the Gothick style was based on structural elements in its designs and furniture, but designers also were able to use their imagination to create "a little exotic fantasy for its own sake." This freedom of design, however, depended on the patron, and how accurate a designer chose to be. In this paper, I am going to examine Gothick designs from the late eighteenth and to the mid nineteenth century. This comparison will feature both American...
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...Romanesque is first used to describe the architecture of Western Europe from about the 9th to 12th century. It has become applied by extension to other arts, in particular sculpture. (click) Sculptures are mostly found inside or on the façade of churches such as tympanum and capitals of the columns. They are all very simple because they believe the soul (inside beauty) is more important than the body. Subject is usually Christian religion, the purpose of the sculpture is to illustrate the message of the Bible, teach stories to the illiterate. A favourite subject for the tympanum is the Last Judgement. The theme vividly reminds the pilgrims of the need of pious devotion. Click At the beginning of the Medieval era, Romanesque columns had all sorts of plants, animals and people intertwined in Gallic patterns. Then many capitals illustrate stories from the bible. click Then, there came the tympanum, then columns to each side, the figures of saints and sinners in stories on the façade of the main entrance. click These very early Romanesque carved figures are saints. Notice the distortions: they have rather blocky bodies made from flat, simple shapes with very large head and hands. Their feet are tiny, compared to their hands. Perspective is also distorted. The size of the figures would make them giants in relationship to the columns. click It also happens to the tympanum: The tympanum of St Trophime; The hands and arms are still very flat and awkward looking; the wings, legs...
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...Southern Gothic Literature Southern gothic literature became famous by Edgar Allen Poe in the 1900’s. Then in the 1920’s and 1930’s William Faulkner made it popular again. Southern gothic literature is the writing about the American south such as, the plantations, dusty downtowns, and aging southern belles. Three southern gothic literature authors that have changed and twisted it to make it their own are William Faulkner, Harper Lee, and Eudora Welty. William Faulkner’s story “A Rose for Emily”, Eudora Welty’s story “A Worn Path”, and Harper Lee's book To Kill A Mockingbird are three southern gothic books that show southern gothic writing. In “A Worn Path”, “A Rose for Emily”, and To Kill A Mockingbird the authors use the element of horror to scare and surprise the reader. Without a doubt there are many ways to make someone think of what you want them to think of just by using words. Eudora Welty makes you think that someone is going to get killed and that the story will end sad. In “A Worn Path” the main character Phoenix goes on this journey to get her grandson’s medication. Phoenix is an old negro woman, she has hallucinations on her journey and isn’t afraid of anything. This story shows horror being used because on her journey she runs into a young white hunter and his dog. When she is walking, she hears a dog and turns around. The dog then jumps up and pushes her into a ditch. The dog’s owner comes along and helps her up. However,when...
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...Frankenstein as a Gothic Novel Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is considered as a Gothic novel but it can be seen as a compilation of both Gothic and Romantic because of the significance of the sublime. Certain events and settings in the novel present the gothic themes. Shelley uses the different themes in her novel to evoke feelings of horror and terror in the reader. Frankenstein engages in a quest in pushing the realms of science to their limits which leads him to playing god and creating an unnatural being using science. One of the themes Shelley uses in the novel to create the gothic presence is the theme of Forbidden Knowledge. Mary Shelley introduces the ideas that science is capable of being very dangerous and has consequences through the character of Victor Frankenstein. Shelley’s time was described as the age of unprecedented scientific discoveries, which influenced her in writing of Frankenstein. The process of the creation of his creation was influenced by the Italian physician Luigi Galvani who discovered “animal electricity” which manifests with the twitching of nerves and muscles when an electric current is applied. Frankenstein seeks to find “the secrets of heaven and earth” to fulfil his quest. He calls them secrets; he is aware they are not to be known and should not be found. Frankenstein knows that acquiring such knowledge would not be easy as he states “how dangerous the acquirement of knowledge”. Frankenstein is aware of the uneasy task of seeking...
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