Overview

This module will investigate approaches to Gothic architecture and its "terrible wonder", both in the medieval period and since. The course will begin with a study of the medieval treatise of Abbot Suger, notebook of Villard de Honnecourt and encomium of Jean de Jandun, to examine the rhetoric employed to comprehend the new aesthetic experience of sacred space. We will also reconsider the post-medieval definition and appraisal of Gothic forms, including John Ruskin's categorical evaluation of a distinctive style. The work of a number of influential writers, including Erwin Panofsky, Paul Frankl and Robert Branner, will focus discussion of the diverse conceptual perspectives in twentieth-century scholarship.