Gothic Architecture

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.1.1: North African Writing and Culture: Arabic, Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanic.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Lia Brozgal (University of California, Los Angeles), Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), Ziad Elmarsafy (King's College London), Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Dalia Mostafa (University of Manchester), Nora Parr (SOAS, University of London), Rita Sakr (Maynooth University)

Domains

Movements, Styles, Periods (architecture)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1120-1550

Places

Africa - North (Location)
Africa - West (Location)
America - Central (Location)

Resources

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The name was coined by neo-classical French critics in the seventeenth-century who pretended to believe that the earlier style of buildings was a barbarous form invented by the Goths. In fact it was invented by French cathedral architects in the Ile-de-France (Paris and south-east of Paris) in the twelfth century and called by contemporaries

opus francigenum

(“French work”). This style emerged from the Romanesque (see also the Cistercians) around 1120. The structural principles of the Romanesque arch distributed the weight of the stone above it as a lateral pressure which forced the columns outwards. Around 1090-1120 architects in the Ile-de France (around Paris) discovered that by adopting and adapting the Arab pointed arch they could increase the downward force and reduce the…

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536 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Gothic Architecture". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 November 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=301, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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