Word: gothic
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...says Rudolph. "It's a matter of significant form. There is something in a human being which demands that we sense the support and the supported-even though it may be sheathed with other materials, and decorated. Look at the difference between these bland cosmetic boxes and a Gothic cathedral, where every last rib and column is structural...
...Bulfinch, Harvard erected no important buildings until the late 19th century, a time of professional architects and gaudy edifices. Among the most prominent extravaganzas of this time were Matthews, Weld, and Grays in the Yard and Claverly and Randolph on the Gold Coast. The excesses of these combinations of Gothic and Jacobean design, if unpleasant to see, are reminiscent...
Toward noon of a soft London day last week, Westminster Abbey glowed as richly as a Renaissance painting. From the banner-draped high altar to the flower-banked west door, the great Gothic nave was adazzle with tinted plumes and winking tiaras. Packed into rows of rented wooden chairs, the 2,000 waiting guests put their best profiles forward for the 30 TV cameras covering the abbey. At 12:02, two minutes behind schedule, a trumpet fanfare sounded from the rafters, the organ thundered Holy, Holy, Holy, and the bridal procession started its stately advance up the blue-carpeted aisle...
...marriage. In this first study of the subject based on "unrestricted use of the Lovelace Papers," the famous collection of family letters and documents, Elwin concludes that the real villain was more probably Annabella herself. A quiet, humorless, literal-minded girl, she took all of Byron's Gothic romancing with impenetrable solemnity. For a man like Byron, thinks Elwin, the temptation to pile extravagance on extravagance must have been almost irresistible once he found an audience that responded to his frequent, mysterious allusions to "atrocious crimes" and "abominable secrets" in his past. Annabella apparently believed that Byron had committed...
Today, Queiroz' controversial work seems too gothic in spots: at the book's close, for example, Amelia dies in childbirth, and Amaro arranges to have the baby murdered by an obliging nurse. Yet Queiroz is a prose master whose message wears better than most 19th century literary reformers. He is not simple-minded enough to believe that Rome is the root of all evil. His churchmen are protected by organized ecclesiastical hypocrisy, but their depravity is all their own. Queiroz' ultimate target is no single human institution but human nature itself...