What is Gothicism

      The Goths are East German tribes. The most likely opinion is that they came from Scandinavia to the center and southeast of the European continent, but the dispute over the European country from which they came continues to this day. The Goths had a strong influence on the political, cultural and religious history of Europe, dividing the Goths into Ostrogoths and Visigoths.

    Gothic tales were set in the Middle, or 'Dark', Ages. Darkness an absence of the light associated with sense, security and knowledge - characterises the looks, moods, atmospheres and connotations of the genre. Gothic texts are, overtly but ambiguously, not rational, depicting disturbances of sanity and security, from superstitious belief in ghosts and demons, displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to por- trayals of perversion and obsession. Moreover, if knowledge is associated with rational procedures of enquiry and understanding based on natural, empirical reality, then gothic styles disturb the borders of knowing and conjure up obscure otherworldly phenomena or the 'dark arts', alchemical, arcane and occult forms normally characterised as delusion, apparition, deception. Not tied to a natural order of things as defined by realism, gothic flights of imagination suggest supernatural possibility, mystery magic, wonder and monstrosity (Botting, 2). 

     It is generally believed that Greco-Roman sources were the first to mention the Goths in the first century under the name Guton . The equation between the Gutun and the present-day Goths is disputed by many historians. Tacitus mentions in his work Germania in about the year 98 that the Goths, their neighbors from the Rugis and Limons among the Germanic peoples, made shields and short swords, and lived near the ocean, behind the Vandals. He described them as <<ruled by a king, a little more strict than other German tribes. In another notable work, the Annals, Tacitus wrote that the Gutun supported Catulda, an exiled young Marcomini, in overthrowing King Marbode. Before that, both Gutun and Nadal were likely subjects of the Marcomanni. The Goths first appeared in historical records in the early third century and were converted to Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries. Therefore, information about the form of Germanic paganism practiced by the Goths before Christianization is limited to a relatively narrow and poorly documented time frame in the third and fourth centuries.

Reference:

Botting, Fred. Gothic. Routledge, 2013.