What is Goth?

Goth is a music-based subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s.

It was developed by fans of gothic rock or Goth-rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre.

The subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion.

Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from 19th-century Gothic fiction and from horror films, as well as elements of Romanticism, Medieval times, and Edwardian and Victorian styles of art of the middle ages.

The scene is centered on music festivals, nightclubs, and organized meetings, especially in Western Europe.

However, nowadays, the Goth subculture is not easily defined or categorized because it now spans several continents and has evolved to include a wide range of musical and clothing styles.

What is the Origin of Goth?

The term "Gothic" was first coined in the Renaissance period (late 15th to early 17th century) by Italian writers, mainly to describe a particular type of architecture and art that appeared in the early 12th century.

Since this type of art was denounced as unrefined and ugly at the time, Gothic was used in a derogatory way as a synonym of 'barbaric', referring to the Goths - Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and its classical culture and the emergence of medieval Europe in the 4th and the 5th centuries AD.

This Gothic style (also known as French Work) of art and architecture was characterized by its pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses, as well as its ornate decoration and the use of light and shadow to create a sense of grandeur and mystery.

Later in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the term morphed into the literature to describe a type of fiction that involved the supernatural (or the promise of the supernatural) and the discovery of mysterious elements of antiquity that usually take its main character into strange or frightening old buildings.