The use of "Gothic" to refer to Tim Burton and/or Batman also merits discussion. Burton is not truly Gothic; if he were, his movies would be completely inappropriate for children and might even come close to being banned in American markets, for Gothic literature was the hardcore pornography of its time, with plenty of torture and sexual perversion. Burton is more of a satirical post-modernist with a Black Comedy streak. And to call Batman "Gothic" is even further from the older definition: the phrase "Gothic hero" is an oxymoron, since Gothic characters are always villainous at worst and (to some extent) sexually perverse at best, neither of which can be applied to Batman (and lest we forget, the original Gothic protagonist, in Milton'sParadise Lost, was Satan himself!); Batman is closer to an "existentialist" (an adherent of the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, and less directly Ayn Rand and Nietzsche) - a similarly dark worldview, but one in which heroism is possible.
This is a very narrow definition of "Gothic", which removes pretty much most known Gothic literature (recall that the term was Gothic romance; many of them had a dashing hero standing against the deptivations of the villain). Saying Gothic was the "hardcore pornography of its time" either dramatically over-estimates how much sex was portrayed (rather than implied) in a Gothic novel or under-estimates how much there was in other novels of the 1700s (Fanny Hill was the hardcore pornography of its time), or possibly both. In Jane Austen's work, Gothics are considered unsuitable for young women because they over-excite the imagination, but they're not considered unsuitable for young women because they're porn.
I'm not aware of anyone previously describing Paradise Lost as Gothic, or even proto-Gothic. It's about a hundred years too early, and lacks most of the elements in the Other Wiki's entry on Gothic fiction.
(I also think Burton might question whether "sexually perverse" couldn't be applied to a guy running around in a rubber bat-costume, fight-flirting with a woman in a PVC cat-costume, but since that's not relevent to whether Batman's Gothic or not, we'll leave it aside.)
Pulled this:
This is a very narrow definition of "Gothic", which removes pretty much most known Gothic literature (recall that the term was Gothic romance; many of them had a dashing hero standing against the deptivations of the villain). Saying Gothic was the "hardcore pornography of its time" either dramatically over-estimates how much sex was portrayed (rather than implied) in a Gothic novel or under-estimates how much there was in other novels of the 1700s (Fanny Hill was the hardcore pornography of its time), or possibly both. In Jane Austen's work, Gothics are considered unsuitable for young women because they over-excite the imagination, but they're not considered unsuitable for young women because they're porn.
I'm not aware of anyone previously describing Paradise Lost as Gothic, or even proto-Gothic. It's about a hundred years too early, and lacks most of the elements in the Other Wiki's entry on Gothic fiction
.
(I also think Burton might question whether "sexually perverse" couldn't be applied to a guy running around in a rubber bat-costume, fight-flirting with a woman in a PVC cat-costume, but since that's not relevent to whether Batman's Gothic or not, we'll leave it aside.)