ABSTRACT
If you google “the Gothic” and hit “Images,” on the screen before you will appear a wildly disparate — if oddly predictable — set of images. Desktop wallpaper featuring a misty forest dominated by a pointed-arch ruin in silhouette and sprinkled with ominous, hooded monks. Bela Lugosi, in a publicity still from Tod Browning's vintage Dracula (1931). Goth babes in ripped tights and figure-hugging corsets. A vaulted, shadowy, crypt-like space beneath a cathedral in Prague. Henry Fuseli's painting The Nightmare (1781–82). A haunted house, silhouetted against the night sky, perched on a hill. A scene from The X-Files (Carter 1993–2002) featuring a terrifying cyber-tunnel.
