The Goths are truly a “lost civilization.” Sweeping down from the north, ancient Gothic tribes sacked the imperial city of Rome and set in motion the decline and fall of the western Roman empire. Ostrogothic and Visigothic kings ruled over Italy and Spain, dominating early medieval Europe. Yet after the last Gothic kingdom fell more than a thousand years ago, the Goths disappeared as an independent people. Over the centuries that followed, as traces of Gothic civilization vanished, its people came to be remembered as both barbaric destroyers and heroic champions of liberty. In this engaging history, David M. Gwynn brings together the interwoven stories of the original Goths and the diverse Gothic heritage, a heritage that continues to shape our modern world. From the ancient migrations to contemporary Goth culture, through debates over democratic freedom and European nationalism, and drawing on writers from Shakespeare to Bram Stoker, Gwynn explores the ever-widening gulf between the Goths of history and the popular imagination. Historians, students of architecture and literature, and general readers alike will learn something new about this great lost civilization.

This first volume of The Cambridge History of the Gothic provides a rigorous account of the Gothic in Western civilisation, from the Goths' sacking of Rome in 410 AD through to its manifestations in British and European culture of the long eighteenth century. Written by international cast of leading scholars, the chapters explore the interdisciplinary nature of the Gothic in the fields of history, literature, architecture and fine art. As much a cultural history of Gothic as an account of the ways in which the Gothic has participated within a number of formative historical events across time, the volume offers fresh perspectives on familiar themes while also drawing new critical attention to a range of hitherto overlooked concerns. From writers such as Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe to eighteenth-century politics and theatre, the volume provides a thorough and engaging overview of early Gothic culture in Britain and beyond.

"This is an important collection and starting point for the worthy goal of promoting a better understanding of the past that makes it less able to be manipulated for contemporary political and religious aims...Compiled out of the European past, its aim of a better understanding of traditional values ought to be useful for contemporary cultures and for the work of scholars of all cultures and continents." - Renaissance Quarterly In the last decade or so, many books have been devoted to the history of Europe.Two conceptual axes predominate in a large number of these accounts: a discourse focusing on Europe's values, and another discourse, fashioned largely in opposition to the first, which emphasizes the process of European "construction." The first conceives of Europe's past teleologically, as a process by which certain values (Christian ethics, individualism, capitalism, tolerance, republicanism, due process, etc.) were affirmed and came to define European culture. The second approach rejects the discourse on values emphasizes the post-Enlightenment emergence of the concept of Europe, and the political and ideological implications in its continuous redefinitions (and re elaborations) during the past two or more centuries. This volume offers new approaches that integrate the long temporal dimension of the values-based approach, albeit devoid of its teleological element, with the "constructivist" interpretation.

The myths of the Norse god Thor were preserved in the Icelandic Eddas, set down in the early Middle Ages. The bane of giants and trolls, Thor was worshipped as the last line of defence against all that threatened early Nordic society. Thor's significance persisted long after the Christian conversion and, in the mid-eighteenth century, Thor resumed a symbolic prominence among northern countries. Admired and adopted in Scandinavia and Germany, he became central to the rhetoric of national romanticism and to more belligerent assertions of nationalism. Resurrected in the latter part of the twentieth century in Marvel Magazine, Thor was further transformed into an articulation both of an anxious male sexuality and of a parallel nervousness regarding American foreign policy. Martin Arnold explores the extraordinary regard in which Thor has been held since medieval times and considers why and how his myth has been adopted, adapted and transformed.

In 1665 an anonymous treatise was added to a book skeptical of witchcraft. That book, "The Discoverie of Witchcraft", compiled by Reginald Scot and published in 1584, defended those accused of witchcraft. It also included so many examples of rituals and charms that it became popular with magical practitioners themselves. Although the"Discoverie" has since been reprinted several times, the anonymous material has not been available for over a hundred years. This material features a combination of ceremonial magic, Paracelsian thought, pagan folk rituals, and spirits from John Dee's "A True & Faithful Relation", all mixed into a synthetic whole. "The Magitians Discovered" Volume I is an analysis of who the authors of the anonymous material were, what their worldview was, and what their motivations may have been in assembling and inserting the anonymous material.