The Gothic Revival of the 19th century in Europe aroused a debate concerning the origin of a style already six centuries old. Besides the underlying quandary of how to define or identify Gothic structures, the Victorian revivalists fought vehemently over the national birthright of the style. Although Gothic has been traditionally acknowledged as having French origins, English revivalists insisted on the autonomy of English Gothic as a distinct and independent style of architecture in origin and development. Surprisingly, nearly two centuries later, the debate over Gothics nationality persists, though the nationalistic tug-of-war has given way to the more scholarly contest to uncover the styles authentic origins. Traditionally, scholarship took structural or formal approaches, which struggled to classify structures into rigidly defined periods of formal development. As the Gothic style did not develop in such a cleanly linear fashion, this practice of retrospective labeling took a second place to cultural approaches that consider the Gothic style as a material manifestation of an overarching conscious Gothic cultural movement. Nevertheless, scholars still frequently look to the Isle-de-France when discussing Gothics formal and cultural beginnings. Gothic historians have entered a period of reflection upon the fields historiography, questioning methodological paradigms. This study examines the developments of recent scholarship toward providing long sought explanations of English Gothic as both a national style and member of an international architectural phenomenon.