The medieval ‘scientia' of structures: the rules of Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón

Medieval builders didn't have a scientific structural theory, however gothic cathedrals were not build without a theory. Gothic masters had a ‘scientia', a body of knowledge which permitted the safe design of their buildings. The nature of this theory has not only a historical or erudite interest; perhaps something could be learned from the true masters of masonry architecture. Literary sources from the gothic period are scarce; in almost all we find structural rules to design the principal structural elements: walls, vaults (ribs and keystones) and, above all, buttresses. These rules (arithmetical or geometrical) conduced in most cases to a certain proportions independently of size, to geometrically similar designs (for example, the depth of a buttress is a fraction of the span). Very rarely, and this is the case with Rodrigo Gil, appeared arithmetical rules which lead to non-proportional designs (following Rodrigo's rule the buttresses become more slender in relation to the span as the size increases). These rules were a means to register stable forms. Proportional rules are, as has pointed Professor Heyman, essentially correct. It is a problem of stability and not of strength. Non-proportional rules express a finer adjustment to some non-proportional design problems: buttress design for the thin domical cross vaults (bóvedas baídas), boss design for the vaults themselves, and wall design for towers. The rules were deduced empirically, give correct dimensions, but above all draw our attention to some significant facts of design which so far have remained unnoticed

Women in the cut of danger : female subjectivity, unregimented masculinity and the pleasure/danger symbiosis from the gothic romance to the erotic thriller

Through a comparison between Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca and Susanna Moore's 1995 novel In the Cut, this article considers the extent to which Franco Moretti's theory of the inevitable dissolution of literary genres is true, with specific regard to the genre of the gothic romance. In evaluating both novels' treatment of female subjectivity, unregimented masculinity and the symbiotic relationship between sexual pleasure and mortal danger, this article investigates the degree to which a contemporary novel such as In the Cut, which is generally acknowledged to be an ‘erotic thriller’, is heavily indebted to the gothic romance and may therefore be interpreted as a continuation of this more traditional genre, and, conversely, the means through which Moore's novel exhibits an overt and defiant resistance to the gothic romance, thereby signifying the dissolution of this particular genre within twentieth-century women's writing

Gothic Matters: Introduction

Once considered escapist or closely linked to fantasy, the Gothic genre (or mode, as scholars increasingly call it) has recently begun to be explored for its material concerns and engagement with real-world matters. This special issue of Text Matters features essays that develop this line of inquiry, focusing on how the Gothic attempts to matter in concrete and critical ways, and maps its rhetorical and aesthetic strategies of intervention and narration, affect and influence. Chapters include work on the French Revolution and the representation of the female body, Frankenstein, colonialism and museum displays in the 19th century, disembodied hands, Native American vampires, neoliberal anxieties in horror film, gender, and post-industrial culture

Thea Astley’s modernism of the 'Deep North', or on (un)kindness

Although she is often perceived as a writer of the local, the rural or the regional, Thea Astley herself notes writing by American modernists as her primary literary influence, and emphasises the ethical value of transnational reading and writing. Similarly, she draws parallels between writing of the American ‘Deep South’ and her own writing of the ‘Deep North’, with a particular focus on the struggles of the racial or cultural outsider. In this article, I pursue Astley’s peculiar blend of these literary genres — modernism, the Gothic and the transnational — as a means of understanding her conceptualisation of kindness and community. Although Astley rejects the necessity of literary community, her writing emphasises instead the value of interpersonal engagement and social responsibility. With a focus on her first novel, Girl with a Monkey (1958), this article considers Astley’s representation of the distinction between community and kindness, particularly for young Catholic women in Queensland in the early twentieth century. In its simultaneous critique of the expectations placed on women and its upholding of the values of kindness and charity, Astley considers our responsibilities in our relations with the Other and with community

Regina Maria Roche’s \u3cem\u3eThe Children of the Abbey\u3c/em\u3e: Contesting the Catholic Presence in Female Gothic Fiction

This article examines Regina Maria Roche’s immensely popular gothic novel, The Children of the Abbey (1796), in light of the ideological and political campaigns that occurred in Britain leading up to the passage of the Catholic emancipation bill in 1829. The Children of the Abbey has been the subject of recent critical interpretation by a number of scholars who attempt to argue that it is pro-Catholic. However, by confronting the portrait of her dead mother in the final volume, Roche’s heroine Amanda discovers not a magical representation of the unknowable and inexplicable past that often stands for Catholicism but instead a rational and common-sense explanation of an earlier historical avatar of displaced feminine power, a coded endorsement of the Protestant way of understanding the world. Amanda gets to the root of female disinheritance and recovers in a real and tangible way her and her brother’s true identities. They seize their patrimony only by understanding and claiming the power of the displaced matriarchy for themselves. This article demonstrates that an objective assessment of the plot, imagery, rhetorical codes, and characters of The Children of the Abbey suggests that the religion Roche expounded was the system of bourgeois morality that we now understand as Providential Deism. While professing rationality and common sense as its ideals, however, the Providential Deist consistently deployed a bifurcated vision of Catholicism. That is, it presented Catholicism in a nostalgic glow, as a gauzy throwback to an earlier feudal era, while also probing it as a threatening political and tyrannical force that, if brought back to life, would threaten the secular values of contemporary Britain

‘Dark am I, yet lovely’: Tracing diabolical evil and femininities in gothic fusion tribal belly dance

While belly dance as a dance genre has been recognised for its ‘ambivalence’ (Downey et al, 2010: 379) in terms of its empowerment of women’s identities and body types and essentialising of narrowly constructed femininities, it has nonetheless in the research literature generally been regarded positively in its influence on women’s spiritualities, corporalities, sexualities and overall well-being. But what about its attraction and allure in its ‘darker’ forms, as a way of empowering women, especially older women, and enabling them to negotiate and traverse a range of difficult, deviant, damaged and/or otherwise negative experiences? Based primarily on a participant observation of a six-week series of dance workshops held in the north of England and drawing on my other experiences as a dancer of other belly dance forms, this paper references Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of horror and the monstrous feminine to explore the meanings, experiences and performances of ‘darkness’ in what is belly dance’s darkest genre, Gothic Fusion Belly Dance (GFBD)

Galileo was wrong: The geometrical design of masonry arches

Since antiquity master builders have used always simple geometrical rules for designing arches. Typically, for a certain form, the thickness is a fraction of the span. This is a proportional design independent of the scale: the same ratio thickness/span applies for spans of 10 m or 100 m. The same kind of rules was also used for more complex problems, like the design of a buttress for a spatial cross-vault. Galileo attacked this kind of proportional design in his Dialogues. He stated the so-called square-cube law: internal stresses grow linearly with scale and therefore the elements of the structures must become thicker in proportion. This law has been accepted many times uncritically for engineering historians, who have considered the traditional geometrical design as unscientific and incorrect. In fact, Galileo’s law applies only to strength problems. Stability problems, such as the masonry arch problem, are governed by geometry. Therefore, Galileo was wrong in applying his reasoning to masonry buildings