As I’ve researched, the term gothic was originally meant as a put-down when certain Renaissance people wanted to associate what had been medieval gothic architecture with uncouth, barbaric Goths/Visigoths. But then gothic “crossed over” when Horace Walpole came out in 1764 with The Castle of Otranto, which he called – for the first time – a gothic novel. (Just before, Britain had seen a type of dark, doomy poetry, but it got called The Graveyard School.) So yes, Walpole was the first to use gothic to describe a medieval period story of gloom and doom – which then lots of people started duplicating. But just the other day I was looking at pictures of the Cologne Cathedral – a gothic architecture masterpiece – and it struck me that these people in Cologne who struggled over 600 years to see it built definitely wanted a dark, eerie mystique thing, i.e., they wanted to stir the dark regions of your psyche – which they did not see as anything bad or evil, of course. Another interesting thing is the whole Gothic Revival, a 19th century architecture movement that brought back medieval gothic visuals (e.g., the Palace of Westminster or Parliament building in London). By then gothic was unmistakably about the dark mystique, no? So I can’t help but think there is a connection, a thread running through gothic architecture, gothic literature/art, and now goth the movement. In other words, nobody “stole” and redefined the term gothic, it just continued snowballing and “gaining friends.” But then your average “scholar” hates it when gothic architecture is connected to gothic novels or goth or anything dark and eerie. What’s your opinion?