The Origins of Gothic

Basically something that is not inherently beautiful like the paintings, stories etc from the Renaissance period was made out to be "gothic" and came to be known as gothic because by comparison they didn’t have much on the paintings from the Renaissance. From at least the last decade of the seventeenth century, gothic meant the medieval. Medieval is often associated with bad things happening, like depressing scenes and scenarios etc. In comparison with the art of the Greeks and Romans, medieval art, architecture and society was thought to be barbaric or, in other words, gothic.

In The Castle of Otranto it is known as "A Gothic Story", he used the word "Gothic" to stand for "medieval". His book was an attempt to bring to mind "the manners of ancient days", of the medieval world. As offered by The Castle of Otranto, these were "the darkest ages of Christianity", in which society was plagued by superstitions, supernatural apparitions and violent passion. Yet medieval is also presented as a necessary counter-balance to the more enlightened world of modernity.

The Castle of Otranto includes many of the motifs that were to become corner stones of the genre. In the book there are many motifs and symbols such as: the castle, subterranean vaults, the supernatural, the persecuted heroine, the villainous father, and so on. It touched on many of the themes that became Gothic standard: incest and forbidden passion etc.