3) Dark entries: medievalism in the post-punk gothic aesthetic

In the cultural formation now known as post-punk gothic, the medieval plays a markedly ambiguous, and so aesthetically generative, role. At once decidedly “modern” in juxtaposition to the “classic” rock that defined a previous generation, post-punk gothic, as evinced through a number of initially disparate yet subsequently related musical acts, engages the non-modern within the very contemporary moment these artistic forms occupy and index. As we see in early reviews of Joy Division, Siouxsie...