Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The first comprehensive book on the whole scope of the Gothic Revival.
Synopsis
At the height of the Victorian period, a passion for the Gothic style swept England and spread far beyond. Gothic architecture, associated with the social and cultural ideals of the Middle Ages, was seen as a means of remaking the modern world. In this lucid exposition, Chris Brooks unravels the layers of meaning that Gothic held for its many reinventors, from the political uses of Gothic history in the seventeenth century to Barry and Pugin's Houses of Parliament in the mid-nineteenth. Yet the Gothic revival is not just manifest in buildings continually recreated; it has taken the form of poetry and fiction, of painting and sculpture, of movies and video games, of Gothic music and Gothic punk. This is the first book to deal comprehensively with the whole scope of the Gothic Revival.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 435-438) and index.
Table of Contents
A style is born : medieval Gothic -- The rhetorics of power : Gothic legacies 1600-1700 -- House and garden : the early eighteenth century -- Picturesque to sublime : the later eighteenth century -- Monsters and maidens : the Gothic novel -- Romantic visions : mobilizing Gothic -- Of homes and castles : domestic Gothic 1775-1830 -- Prisons to Parliament : secular institutions 1800-1840 -- Discovering true principles : ecclesiastical Gothic 1810-1850 -- Bearing the torch : Gothic beyond Britain -- Sermons in stones : readings in high Victorian Gothic -- A new age : Europe and America 1850-1900 -- Cathedrals and commerce : late Gothic revival.