3. Pre-romanticism and the “Gothic Mood.” The
positive sub-trends just mentioned were but exceptions
that proved the rule, for in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries the general attitude to the idea of the
Gothic was overwhelmingly pejorative. The true basis
for a revaluation of the idea was laid in a series of
far-reaching changes in taste that developed primarily
in England (if present-day scholarship is correct) and
then spread to the Continent. This shift in taste pre-
supposed a loosening of the bonds of normative classi-
cism with its insistence on qualities of clarity, regular-
ity, and symmetry—qualities often exemplified, as has
been noted, by reference to concrete architectural
models. The shift was achieved by a gradual redefini-
tion of the pivotal concept of Nature, which had hith-
erto been monopolized by the classicists. Partly as a
result of the influence of the new fashion for English
landscape gardening, writers began to emphasize that
irregularity and variety were inseparable from any
adequate concept of Nature. Ultimately, these aspects
were subsumed under the general rubric of “the Pic-
turesque,” which was popularized by William Gilpin
(1724-1804). A related aesthetic concept, that of the
Sublime, assumed a pole of sensory experience, strongly
tinged with emotional expectancy, that was very
different from its opposite, the Beautiful. From this
it was but a step (though many, because of the prestige
of classical normative concepts, refused to take it) to
identifying the Beautiful with the classical, the Sublime
with the nonclassical. In this way the tables could be
turned, and Nature in its highest sense (the Sublime)
be linked to a departure from the constraint of classical
rules. In another direction, an ambiguous position
developed from the association of the natural with the
primitive or primordial, as in the work of the French
architectural critic, the Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier
(1713-69). These various trends in taste are often linked
with emergent romanticism and the whole vast move-
ment is consequently termed “pre-romanticism.”
Another major factor in the improved climate of
response to the Gothic constellation is the growth of
the trend towards aesthetic relativism. As Bishop Hurd
asserted in 1762: “The Gothic architecture has its own
rules by which when it comes to be examined, is seen
to have its own merit, as well as the Grecian” (Letters
on Chivalry and Romance, Letter VIII). Gradually and
uncertainly there developed the conviction, by no
means universally established even today, that every
cultural manifestation deserves to be evaluated in terms
of the conditions prevailing in the age in which it was
produced, rather than being judged in advance in
accordance with some predetermined external stand
ard. Thus the rise of aesthetic pluralism is closely linked
with the emergence of an appreciation for the phe-
nomena previously denigrated as Gothic.
It is important to note, however, that this rehabil-
itation of Gothic was a complex process, developing
in the later eighteenth century out of the mists of an
aesthetic constellation known as the “Gothic mood.”
Throughout the eighteenth century—and even into the
nineteenth as Michelet and Victor Hugo attest—
exploration of Gothic themes continued to be tinged
with an aura of the forbidden, the exotic, and the
supernatural. Such preoccupations were certainly to
the fore in the eighteenth-century fashion for grave-
yard or sepulchral verse compositions, sometimes sim-
ply called Gothic poetry. Such works as David Mallet's
The Excursion (1726) and Thomas Warton's The Pleas-
ures of Melancholy (1747) present lurid images of
ghosts and owls infesting desolate moonlit landscapes
punctuated by tombs and ruins. Later in the century
the poems of “Ossian” with their evocation of a rude
but noble society localized in a quintessentially north-
ern setting were to bring this trend closer to the sphere
of aesthetic primitivism. Since the Celts of the Ossianic
poems were often wrongly annexed to the Germanic
stock, it was a simple matter for Klopstock and others
to enshrine Ossian in their pantheon of primordial
Germanic antiquities. Another feature closely con-
nected to this general complex is the so-called Gothic
novel, the fashion for this term being launched by
Horace Walpole's sensational The Castle of Otranto:
A Gothic Story (1764).
Walpole is, of course, also significant for his interest
in architecture, evidenced notably by the creation of
that important landmark in the early development of
the Gothic revival, Strawberry Hill, his country seat
near London, where the new work began in 1750. This
structure was, in all frankness, a somewhat flimsy and
unconvincing exercise, and the host of English garden
pavilions that followed in its wake deserve little better
than to be called sham Gothic. Yet the eighteenth
century indubitably saw the beginnings of the first
genuine efforts to grapple with the problem of giving
a firm theoretical basis to the understanding of Gothic
architecture.
One of the most important lines of development in
this effort to achieve theoretical justification was to
trace Gothic building practices to a conscious imitation
of plant forms, especially trees (an idea that, inci-
dentally, was broached as early as 1510 by an anony-
mous writer, the pseudo-Raphael, in a report to Pope
Leo X on the antiquities of Rome, and then apparently
forgotten). In 1751 Bishop Warburton developed at
some length the idea that the Goths who had been
accustomed to worship in sacred groves were subse-
quently impelled to give their permanent religious
shrines the appearance of an avenue of trees. This
supposed origin of Gothic architecture, actually devoid
of any historical foundation, was nonetheless important
for the eighteenth century because it suggested a link
between Gothic and the mysterious fecundity of Na-
ture. Apart from such explanations, Gothic might also
be made more palatable by reforming it so as to bring
the style at least within hailing distance of classical
respectability. Thus an “improved” Gothic, suitably
pruned and chastened, could be exhibited as virtually
the peer of the classical orders, just as long before the
Italian Tuscan order had been cleaned up to take its
place among the other orders of pure Greek lineage.
This reform was primarily accomplished by the
brothers Batty and Thomas Langley in their
Ancient
[i.e., Gothic]
Architecture Restored and Improved by
Rules and Proportions (London, 1742). The Langleys'
presentation of Gothic as a separate order had been
anticipated by Hans Vredeman de Vries'
Architectura
(Antwerp, 1565). Nonetheless, as has been noted, actual
Gothic revival building of the eighteenth century
remained trifling and largely unserious, flourishing
alongside the ephemeral fashions for chinoiserie and
arabesque.
