Greetings.
On 2013 Aug 29, at 16:52, John Cowan wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 11:05 AM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@simonstl.com>wrote:
>
> The word has too many meanings. There's a roughly continuous thread of
>> attractive with/because of a dose of the repulsive, but it's hard to pin
>> down.
>>
>
> "There has never to my knowledge been any period of Gothic English
> literature, but the list of Gothic revivalists stretches completely across
> its entire history, from the _Beowulf_ poet to writers of our own day."
> --Northrop Frye
I initially misparsed Peter Hunsberger's remark about a renaissance Goth (whether or not in the same way as Peter, I don't know), and had visions of east-germanic exotics wandering around Florence, wondering aloud "ah, if we'd been here 1000 years ago there'd be some right good sacking here!" The timing looks _just_ about possible, but if so, the poor goths would be very far from home indeed.
I vividly remember reading about gothic migrations in Decline and Fall when I was young, and being delightedly impressed by Gibbon's description of (in my memory) their multi-generational punk anabasis across Europe, finding the Black Sea, and oh, look! ... the sea, the sea! ... boats! ... sea-borne sacking! ... Anatolia! ... gold!
But then I realised we were still talking about architecture and revivals.
Hmm: what would goth markup look like, I wonder?
<!ELEMENT gothicperson (tribe?, parentsname2, sackings*)> ?
All the best,
Norman