Goth or not?

I spent the day at Spring Grove Cemetery, on a sunny blustery day, taking photos of local Gothic revival and classical revival statuary to be ready to talk about the Gothic at our next class meeting.  I am also following a MOOC from the University of Stirling about the Gothic, which is very interesting. A principal concept of the Gothic sensibility is the contrast of terror vs. horror. Terror is sublime fear, uncertainty, the grip of the unknown. In contrast, is horror where the veil is lifted, the monster is shown, and the unknown becomes known. Stephen King adds another, baser level: the gross out.  One person in the MOOC mentioned that that terror is a figment of the mind whereas horror is where you get to see the brains.  Gothic sensibility is about sublime terror, not horror or gross-out.  Those last two are other genres.




Here is my photo that shows the most gothic sensibility of my day in Spring Grove. Here the moss is beginning the creep up the walls of the crypt. Dead leaves cluster at the door that is chained, but slightly ajar.  Was someone trying to get in or was something trying to leave? Yes. I creeped myself out.

In a more subtle sense, I really liked this one for its capture of the idea of Gothic as romantic decay. This concept is sometimes called "dark romanticism".  Here is a statue of a woman in deep contemplation with the marble, a symbol of purity, molding on the interior and being weathered away on the exterior.  That the mold is black, not green, seems to make the decay even creepier.