The term gothic has long conjured images of brooding castles and gloomy edifices, perched over shadowy landscapes, their halls filled with the shrieks of innocent maidens being taken to some dark and terrible fate. This rather simplistic view perhaps limits a larger perspective that can be gained by analyzing its relationship to another movement in literature that occurred nearly simultaneously -- Romanticism. By taking examples from three of Romanticism's first generational figures, the schismatic distinction between the two genres begins to blur, perhaps leading towards a better definition of the Gothic, and a less rigid one of what is Romanticism. In looking at standard defintions of the Gothic, and setting them next to those of Romanticism, similarities begin to appear. By bringing the Gothic out of the margins and into the mainstream of thought, we can see the same patterns occuring repeatedly, albeit with different trappings. As the Gothic is filtered through Romanticism and vice versa, a legitmization will hopefully begin to take place, allowing for discussion rather than dismissal.