Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. Originating in 12th-century France and lasting into the 16th century, Gothic architecture was known during the period as Opus Francigenum ("French work") with the term Gothic first appearing during the later part of the Renaissance. Its characteristics include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings, such as dorms and rooms.

It is in the great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to appeals to the emotions, whether springing from faith or from civic pride. A great number of ecclesiastical buildings remain from this period, of which even the smallest are often structures of architectural distinction while many of the larger churches are considered priceless works of art and are listed with UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. For this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches.

Gothic alphabet

The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas (or Wulfila) for the purpose of translating the Bible.

The alphabet is essentially an uncial form of the Greek alphabet, with a few additional letters to account for Gothic phonology: Latin F, two Runic letters to distinguish the /j/ and /w/ glides from vocalic /i/ and /u/, and the letter ƕair to express the Gothic labiovelar. It is completely different from the 'Gothic script' of the Middle Ages, a script used to write the Latin alphabet.

Origin

Ulfilas is thought to have consciously chosen to avoid the use of the older Runic alphabet for this purpose, as it was heavily connected with heathen beliefs and customs. Also, the Greek-based script probably helped to integrate the Gothic nation into the dominant Greco-Roman culture around the Black Sea. The individual letters, however, still bear names derived from those of their Runic equivalents.

In past centuries, some authors asserted that Greek-like letters were already in use among Germanic tribes long before Ulfilas. Johannes Aventinus (c. 1525) even ascribed them to the mythical progenitor Tuisto, claiming the Greeks had really stolen the idea from them, and not the Phoenicians. Such theories enjoy no scholarly support today, as all available evidence traces the development of alphabetic writing to the Middle East, although there is some testimony by classical Roman sources, as well as a few assorted tombstones, indicating that Greek letters were sometimes used in Germany, in addition to Gaul, by the time of Julius Caesar (1st century BC).

Gothic (album)

Gothic is the second full-length album released by British heavy metal band Paradise Lost.

This album has been re-released twice, both of which contain remastered sound. The 2003 re-release of this album appended two remixes of songs from Lost Paradise, bringing the total running time to 49 minutes and 30 seconds. Remixed/live versions of "Eternal", "Gothic" and "The Painless", appear on the 2003 digipak re-release of Lost Paradise. In 2008, Gothic was re-released with a bonus DVD with a rare performance by the band.

Track listing

All songs written by Nick Holmes and Gregor Mackintosh.

Personnel

Guest musicians

Production

References

Penthouse Forum

Penthouse Forum, sometimes simply Forum, is a magazine owned by FriendFinder Networks, the publishers of Penthouse magazine.

History and profile

Penthouse Forum was started in March 1970 as a supplement to Penthouse. Unlike the main Penthouse title, Penthouse Forum is more journalistic than pornographic, and features editorials and opinion pieces on controversial contemporary topics. It features regular monthly columns titled "On the Boards", "On the Beltway", and "On the Edge". It also features a section for the "Letter of the Month".

Notable contributors

Alastair Campbell, a journalist and Tony Blair's former Director of Communications, was a contributor to the magazine, as was Chad Varah, the founder of The Samaritans charity and an Anglican priest, who was a consultant on sex education for the magazine.

In July 2006 the rights to the UK edition were licensed to Trojan Publishing.

See also

References

External links

Forum (KQED)

Forum is a two-hour live call-in radio program produced by KQED-FM, presenting discussions of local, state, national and international issues, and in-depth interviews. The program began in 1990 as a politics-oriented talk show, created and hosted by Kevin Pursglove. Since 1993, it has been hosted by scholar, author, professor, and former KGO Radio host Michael Krasny, who broadened the program's scope to a cross-section of current events.

The format of Forum varies from show to show, but generally involves an in-person interview followed by public Q&A via phone or email with one or more subjects, often nationally prominent authors and scholars. The program airs for two hours on weekday mornings, with an hour repeated in the evening.

References

External links

Forum (Roman)

A forum (Latin forum "public place outdoors", plural fora; English plural either fora or forums) was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls. Many forums were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi.

The functions of a forum

In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera. In that case it supplemented the function of a conciliabulum.

Every municipium had a forum. Forums were the first of any civitas synoecized whether Latin, Italic, Etruscan, Greek, Celtic or some other. The first forums were sited between independent villages in the period, known only through archaeology. After the rise of the Roman Republic, the most noted forum of the Roman world, the Roman Forum in Rome itself, served as a model of new construction. By the time of the late Republic expansions refurbishing of the forums of the city had inspired Pompey Magnus to create the Theatre of Pompey in 55 BC. The Theatre included a massive forum behind the theatre arcades known as the Porticus Pompei (Colonnades of Pompey). The structure was the forebearer to Julius Caesar's first Imperial forum and the rest to follow.