Thank you - as someone who is pagan and who practices magic, the putting of a k at the end of words ending in 'c' drives me nuts. Yes, there is a difference between the gothic architectural period and the gothic literary period, but it is spelled the same in every book I've read.
As for the dark ages...funny thing i saw a few years back on one of the discovery type channels - judging by the rings in trees, and from descriptions of the world at the time, its possible that 'dark' might be more appropriate than most people thought. Its believed now that gas and ash from a volcano actually hovered over europe, at least for a time. Granted, telelvision, might not have been 100% spot on, and its been a while, so I might be misremembering a detail or two.
Oddly, it was also the golden age for the arabic world, in a lot of ways, including technology.
And yeah, that would make sense. There was a good bit of romanticism with the earliest goth music scene. Bands like the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and my own personal favorite, The Bolshoi were pretty romantic in a punk/post-punk sensibility.