The Useful Myth of Gothic Ancestry

T h e U se fu l M y th o f G o th ic A n c e stry M A R K M A D O F F rqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA A my th of gothic ancestry did not simply mean bad history- Those who perpetuated the myth usually obeyed a stronger call than that of accuracy to historical evidence.1 The ancestry in question was a prod­ uct of fantasy invented to serve specific political and emotional pur­ poses- Established as popular belief, the idea of gothic ancestry offered a way of revising the features of the past in order to satisfy the imagina­ tive needs of the present- It flourished in response to current anxieties and desires, taking its mythic substance from their objects, its appeal from their urgency- By translating such powerful motives into oth­ erworldly terms, gothic myth permitted a close approach to otherwise forbidden themes. The process of translation began early. Even in Elizabethan times nostalgic castle-building enjoyed a vogue in England-2 The castles, like Spenser’s F a erie Q u e e n e , were reversions to a lost cultural mo­ ment, and they retained that symbolic value throughout the early decades of the eighteenth century. The same age that produced such monuments of antiquarian diligence as Camden’s B rita n n ia (1586) and Dugdale’s M o n a stic o n (1655)3 also witnessed a renewed reverence for purely imaginary ancestors- The cultivation of a tribal pseudohistory became at least as important as any archaeological work- Actual his­ torical research into the character of medieval society and feudal in­ stitutions certainly stimulated this imaginative activity- To a greater 337 338 / XWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA M A R K M A D O F F degree, however, it followed an independent course. Creating a mythical— as opposed to a historical— sense of ancestry implied an attempt to answer two crucial questions: W hat was the previous state of society? W hat is the essential, primal condition of man? The lines of origin led back to the gothic. Naturally, the world of gothic myth was a convenient site for testing social ideals and their negations. M odem customs and attitudes could be compared with the gothic originals. In that sense, the eighteenthcentury gothic, as crude and escapist as it often appears, cannot be isolated from later gothicism. The early interest in alternative ances­ tral societies anticipated the overtly Utopian thinking of Ruskin, Pu­ gin, M orris, or Carlyle. In High Victorian gothic, the disillusionment became more radical, and playfulness was largely exchanged for ear­ nest experiment. But the roots of the “serious” movements lie in the eighteenth century. Even a quick survey of gothic fiction titles will show that the imagi­ nary gothic world had very generous boundaries. W ho were the Goths to whom the term g o th ic re fe rre d ? W ould-be historical answers have ranged from the Germans, Normans, Britons, and Saxons to the Arabs and M oors.4 Italian Renaissance polemic, following the line of Giorgio Vasari's Lives o f th e P a in te rs (1550), identified them broadly as the barbarian destroyers of Greco-Roman civilization. But the Italians also called G o th ic the later Germanic invaders who ineptly tried to restore Roman art, law, and custom.5 As a descriptive or generic label, g o th ic is very confusing. Architectural usage has been only slightly more orderly. Is it possible to determine the meaning of this elusive word? M any etymological accounts have tried to do so.6 Reviewing them in relation to the sensibility of gothic fiction, one finds a com­ mon meaning for all variants: the gothic is a n c e stra l It was a concern for ancestry that excited the enduring controversy over the gothic. At issue was the source of cultural standards. The Italian humanists, for example, who sought to reconstruct a classical vocabulary of style, detested the gothic because it seemed a desecra­ tion of their true heritage. They argued that the imaginary Goths, like the real tribes of that name, had supplanted the legitimate ancestors, having...