Lewis Call: "Sounds Like Kinky Business to Me": Subtextual and Textual Representations of Erotic Power in the Buffyverse

Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies, 6(4)

 

[1] Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel have done a great deal to promote tolerance of alternative sexualities. The two programs are especially well known for their positive depictions of gay and lesbian sexuality. However, Buffy and Angel have also brought about another intriguing revolution in the representation of unorthodox sexual practices. Throughout the twelve seasons which comprise the Buffyverse narrative, Buffy and Angel have consistently provided positive portrayals of sadomasochism (S/M) and erotic power exchange. In the early seasons these representations were, of necessity, largely subtextual. As the two shows progressed, however, they began to provide bolder, more explicit depictions of S/M. Thus the Buffyverse's discourse of erotic power gradually moved out of the subtextual and into the realm of the textual. As representations of erotic power exchange became more open and explicit at the textual level, these representations became increasingly available to the Buffyverse's audience. In the later seasons of Buffy and Angel, the two programs did not merely depict S/M, but actually presented it as an ethical, egalitarian way in which participants might negotiate the power relations which are an inevitable part of their lives. Buffy and Angel brought S/M out of the closet and normalized it. The two programs thus offered their audiences a positive and practical model of erotic power exchange. The Buffyverse has already secured for itself a prominent place in the history of narrative television. By endorsing the ethical exchange of erotic power, Buffy and Angel may earn an important place in the history of sexuality as well.

[2] Few television shows are as fascinated with their own subtexts as Buffy and Angel. Both shows feature a frequently flagrant disregard for their own master narratives. "Storyteller" (B7016), for example, emphasizes the perspective of a character who would be considered minor on most programs, geeky reformed "super villain" Andrew. "The Girl in Question" (A5020) sends Angel and Spike to Italy, ostensibly on a quest for Buffy, but quite obviously for the real purpose of permitting the homoerotic relationship between the two male vampires to eclipse their mutual obsession with Buffy (who, like a proper fetish object, is much discussed but does not appear in the episode). Both shows also have a deep and abiding interest in saying those things which cannot be said with words. Thus in "Hush" (B4010), the characters must find ways to express themselves in the absence of spoken language, while in "Once More, with Feeling" (B6007), they can express their deepest feelings—but only in song. Series creator Joss Whedon seems determined to make use of every possible form of non-linguistic communication including, remarkably, ballet (see "Waiting in the Wings," A3013). Since spoken dialogue is the main form of textuality in narrative television, the effect of these experiments is to foreground such normally subtextual elements as gesture, facial expression, color, editing cuts and (of course!) music and choreography. (But then, Giles warned us way back in Season Two that the subtext is rapidly becoming the text, “Ted,” B2011.)

David B Dickens and Elizabeth Miller: Michel Beheim, German Meistergesang, and Dracula

Journal of Dracula Studies 5 (2003)

[This article comprises two papers given at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts in 2003. David B Dickens is Professor of German at Washington & Lee University, while Elizabeth Miller is the author of five books on Dracula.]

A. Beheim  and the Tradition of German Meistergesang (David B Dickens)

While  the name of Michel Beheim (1416-1472) is unfamiliar to most, the subject of one of his longer poems, a contemporary account of the atrocities committed by  the historical Dracula,  is widely known (and will be dealt with by Elizabeth Miller in the second part of this article). This section examines the poet himself as well as the age and the literary culture within which he worked, in particular the tradition known as  Meistergesang  (also Meistersang).

Beheim[1] was Germany’s most productive poet of the fifteenth century. In German literary history he occupies a controversial position between the courts of the late Middle Ages and the newer urban society that fostered Meistergesang. He was long considered an epigone, an extensive borrower, and even a hack, but more positive assessments of his work have been appearing in the past thirty years. Born in 1416 in the small town of Sülzbach near Weinsberg in southwestern Germany, he followed his father’s trade of a weaver until about 1439, when his local feudal lord, the Imperial Archchamberlain Konrad von Weinsberg brought him to his court, perhaps as a soldier. It  may be fortuitous coincidence that Konrad, earlier close to Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund (r.1411-1433), was a member of Nürnberg’s prestigious “Order of the Dragon,” which  had inducted Vlad Dracula’s father in 1431, the same year Vlad was born. Konrad was something of a humanist, a poet of some accomplishment, and a patron who also  encouraged Beheim’s own development as a poet.

When Konrad died in 1448, Beheim offered his services to Margrave Albrecht Achilles of Brandenburg and served  in his Heidelberg court from 1448  to 1454. He was court poet, to be sure, but also an emissary of sorts who traveled widely; thus, in 1450 he went to Norway and Denmark to attend the coronation of Danish King Christian IV as King of Norway. Beheim carried messages from Margrave Albrecht to the latter’s niece, now Queen of Denmark.

Beheim had many such aristocratic patrons and benefactors and knew many courts,[2] but perhaps the most significant period of his life was from 1459-1466, the time spent at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III (1440-93) in Vienna. He accompanied the Emperor on the “Bulgarian Crusade” against the Turks in 1460 and witnessed the popular uprising of the Viennese people against Friedrich and the siege of the Hofburg in 1461-62. He wrote about this in his Book of the Viennese (Das Buch von den Wienern), a 13,000-line chronicle in “ponderous” rhymed verse (McDonald, Song-Poetry 245-55) composed during the years 1462-66. In 1462-63 Beheim was a frequent visitor to the Abbey of Melk on the Danube, where he met the Franciscan monk Brother Jacob, a refugee who had fled Dracula’s cruelties. Beheim’s poem about Dracula was probably completed in late 1463 and presented at court during the winter of that year. A falling-out with the Emperor led to his dismissal in 1466 (when Beheim entertained at the Imperial Diet in Nürnberg) or 1467; he returned to Heidelberg, this time to the court of Friedrich I, Count Palatine of Wittelsbach (1425-76).

G. David Keyworth: Was the Vampire of the Eighteenth Century a Unique Type of Undead-corpse?

Folklore Volume 117, Issue 3, 2006

Abstract

In his Treatise on Vampires and Revenants (1746), Calmet argued that although Western Europe may have witnessed troublesome revenants in the past, the vampires of Eastern Europe were a unique type of undead-corpse. In this paper, I examine the characteristic features of the various types of undead-corpse that supposedly existed in Europe from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, so too the revenants of nineteenth-century New England. I argue that, unlike other types of undead-corpse, the distinguishing feature of eighteenth-century vampires was their apparent thirst for blood.

Introduction

The Slavic notion of blood-sucking corpses arose in south-eastern Europe sometime in the early medieval period (Perkowski 1989, 18), and by the eighteenth century belief in their existence was so extensive that in Poland, for example, not to believe in vampires was tantamount to heresy (Calmet 2001, 333). Popular fascination with revenants was further fuelled by reports of vampire outbreaks erupting across Eastern Europe in the early decades of the eighteenth century. In their wake, the Austro-Hungarian authorities, under whose jurisdiction the occurrences took place, enacted legislation to quell the situation, conducted official investigations into the matter and documented their findings. The Visum et Repertum (1732), for example, is the official report into the activities of a reputed vampire, Arnod Paole, and his undead progeny, that supposedly haunted a Serbian village and killed many of the inhabitants. Furthermore, the Church hierarchy and educated elite embarked upon an ambitious programme to re-educate and “enlighten” the masses of eastern Europe and to discourage popular belief in the existence of revenants (Klaniczay 1987, 166–74).

Subsequently, the vampire outbreaks inspired many learned dissertations on the topic, the most influential and well known being that of Augustin Calmet, a respected Benedictine scholar and antiquarian from Lorraine, France (Bennett 2001, xiii–xiv). In 1746, Calmet published his best-selling compendium on vampires and revenants, Dissertations sur les apparitions des anges, des démons et des esprits: Et sur les revenants et vampires de Hongrie, de Bohème, de Moravie et de Silésie. A revised edition appeared in 1751, which was subsequently re-edited and translated by Rev. Henry Christmas in 1850 and renamed The Phantom World. [1] According to Calmet, however, blood-sucking corpses were unknown in Western Europe until the late seventeenth century, some sixty years prior to the publication of his treatise. And, although there may have been troublesome undead-corpses in Western Europe during the past, the Slavic vampires of the eighteenth century were unique:

In this age, a new scene presents itself to our eyes and has done for about sixty years in Hungary, Moravia, Silesia and Poland; men, it is said, who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, destroy their health and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings, by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out their hearts, or burning them. These are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches … In the twelfth century also, in England and Denmark, some resuscitations similar to those of Hungary were seen. But in no history do we read anything similar, so common, or so decided, as what is related to us of the vampires of Poland, Hungary and Moravia (Calmet 2001, 207–8).

Jean Marigny: Secrecy as Strategy in Dracula

 Journal of Dracula Studies 2 (2000)

[Jean Marigny, a TSD member in France, is affiliated with Université Stendhal in Grenoble. This article is based on a paper he gave at the Second World Dracula Congress in Romania in May 2000.]

The words “secret” and “secrecy” come from the Latin form secretum, itself derived from the verb secernere which means “to separate”, “to distinguish”, “to leave out” and even “to eliminate.” Secret and secrecy play an important part in Dracula and it is obvious that many facts in the plot of the novel are never clearly elucidated and are often willingly left out. The reader feels as if an important part of the truth was concealed from him and whenever an explanation is given, it seems to come too late. Like detective novel writers, who let their readers devise their own hypotheses for the sake of suspense, and wait until the end to disclose the truth, Bram Stoker keeps useful information for himself. It is not known until the middle of the story, for instance, that we are openly told that Count Dracula is a vampire. Stoker’s narrative strategy is based on secrecy, not only in the way the story is told, but in the plot itself, since the protagonists often keep secrets from each other.

                        For the modern reader who knows even before reading the novel what Dracula is, and who knows the plot, either by hearsay or from the movies, it is obvious that there is no real secret. We must keep in mind, however, that for Stoker’s contemporaries it was quite different. They did not know what the novel was about and they enjoyed its atmosphere of mystery and suspense.

                        It appears that the narrative framework of Dracula is meant to confuse and puzzle the reader. In keeping with the tradition of Gothic masterpieces like The Monk by Lewis, Stoker makes use of many different narrative voices. Dracula is in fact a patchwork of texts including diaries, journals, letters, telegrams, reports, etc. Very often the information contained in these documents seems to have no link whatsoever with the main plot. Such facts as the tragic events on board the Demeter, the escape of the wolf Bersicker from London Zoo and Renfield’s medical case seem to have little to do with Harker’s experience in Transylvania. The reader, who has no explanation, is non-plussed. Moreover, unlike most earlier Gothic novels, in Dracula there is no omniscient narrator to help us understand what is happening. The reader has to find the truth by himself. Thus we can say that Stoker’s novel is quite modern (and perhaps even postmodern). Undoubtedly many contemporary writers of horror fiction, like Stephen King and Peter Straub, are much indebted to him.

Kristopher Broyles: Vampirism, and the Visual Medium: The Role of Gender within Pop Culture’s Latest Slew of Vampires

 Journal of Dracula Studies 12 (2010)

 [Kristopher Broyles recently graduated from             the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith        with a bachelor's in English. He intends to             pursue graduate study in the field of Communication, emphasizing film and             television, at the University of Arkansas in    the fall of 2010.]

 

            The resurgence of vampirism can be readily viewed within contemporary American media and culture. From a fanatical teenage obsession with the screen adaptations of author Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight saga to True Blood, a television series dealing with vampirism that is aimed at an adult audience, vampires are seeing a revival. By examining these visual works in combination with Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television series which helped set the stage for the critical analysis of feminism and vampirism within contemporary popular culture, I suggest that the role of the vampire in the visual medium is connected with societal views of gender.

Further, I contend that, because visual media such as film and television often reaches a larger audience than other forms of media, its impact may be more widespread. Therefore, there is a distinction made between the written works upon which Twilight and True Blood are based and their film and television adaptations. Also, the visual medium facilitates more passive learning than do other forms of media. Therefore, the impact of ideas about femininity and masculinity may be more passively learned, accepted, or integrated into society.

            Both femininity and masculinity are explored in each of the aforementioned works. Female and male characters are presented in a variety of ways; some are true to life, and some are very much skewed and unrealistic. Regardless of how these characters and concepts about gender are explored, there are certainly messages about gender included in or transmitted by the works Twilight, True Blood, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Each of these texts present individual and varied views of femininity. While representation of the feminine seems to be largely positive within True Blood and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the messages transmitted about femininity within Twilight seem to be quite narrow and underdeveloped, which can be seen specifically through an analysis of its main character, Bella Swan. However, Buffy the Vampire Slayer presents a clearly feminist title character, and “True Blood” explores femininity in both a compelling and complicated manner through a supporting female character, Tara Thornton, as well as through Sookie Stackhouse, its lead female character. While each of these texts present a different view of femininity, they effectively convey particular messages about gender, both positive and negative.

Leszek Gardełaa - Kamil Kajkowskib: Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland

Leszek Gardełaa - Kamil Kajkowskib, Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland Vampires, criminals or slaves? Reinterpreting ‘deviant burials’ in early medieval Poland, World Archaeology Volume 45, Issue 5, 2013, p. 780-796.

Abstract

Unusual funerary behaviour is now an exciting area of research in Central and Western European archaeology. In Poland, since the first half of the twentieth century, finds of atypical or deviant burials have been almost exclusively interpreted as evidence for so-called ‘anti-vampire’ practices, intended to prevent the dead from rising, haunting and hurting the living. In the last decade or so, new attempts have been made, especially in the UK, to develop more sophisticated understandings of deviant burials, and to perceive them not only in the context of popular superstition, but also with regard to judicial practices. Inspired by these new developments, this paper offers a range of new interpretations of deviant burials from early medieval Poland with a focus on burials where people were buried in a prone position, decapitated or covered with stones.


Introduction

In 1957 Bonifacy Zielonka published an article that described a range of puzzling burials which he had found in the region of Kuyavia, Poland. Among them was the grave of a female in a prone position and that of a decapitated man whose head was placed between his legs. While discussing the latter grave, Zielonka mentions that one of the workers on the excavation thought it to be the burial of a ‘witch’ (in Polish strzyga) – a rather sensationalist interpretation, but one with which Zielonka (1957, 21–3) appears to have agreed. The works of Zielonka (1957, 1958) are among the first academic studies of ‘deviant burials’ in Polish archaeological literature and today, from the perspective of more than fifty years of study, it is clear that they had a significant impact on this fascinating, yet problematic field of research.
In subsequent years, evidence for early medieval funerary practices that deviate from the norm has been noted in different parts of Poland and at cemeteries that range in date between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. In the majority of excavation reports, articles and monographs, however, interpretations are rather limited and until recently scholars almost always argued that unusual graves contained people who, it was feared, would become revenants or ‘vampires’ (e.g. Falis 2008; Porzeziński 2008; Stanaszek 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001; Zoll-Adamikowa 1971: 47–54 contra Żydok 2004). The ‘vampiric’ interpretation of unusual burials from Poland has become dogma and remains largely unchallenged.
In the last few years, however, a new branch of ‘judicial archaeology’ has developed in Poland (e.g. Duma 2010; Grabaczyk 2008; Wojtucki 2009; but see also articles published in the journal Pomniki Dawnego Prawa devoted to the study of early-modern legal culture in Poland and beyond). With a particular focus on the archaeology of law and legal culture in all of its aspects – from the study of execution sites and their specific penitential devices (e.g. gallows, stocks, etc.), through analyses of burials of criminals, to an acknowledgement of the wider social context of judicial practices in the Middle Ages or the early-modern period – this new field of research has filled a significant niche in our understandings of Poland’s past. In our view, these new studies have also had a significant impact on the perception of early medieval ‘deviant burials’ and on refining traditional interpretations.

Janet Goodall - Emyr Williams: Paradigmatic Brilliance: Or, So Sparkly, It's Broken

Journal of Dracula Studies 14 (2012)

[Dr. Janet Goodall is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of Warwick, specializing in school leadership and parental engagement.] 

[Dr Emyr Williams is a Lecturer of Psychology at Glyndwr University specializing in new forms of religious expression, especially in relation to non-traditional religions.]

It would be difficult to speak about contemporary views of vampires without considering the effect of Meyer’s Twilight saga. The story moved swiftly from print to film, so the black covers of the original books are almost as familiar a sight as the soulful gaze of perhaps the most sincere vampire in the literature. Edward Cullen looks out at us from a million movie posters and a hundred thousand ads.  Blockbuster vampires are, of course, not a new phenomenon; they’ve been with us at least since the rise of Anne Rice’s characters, not to mention the string of 1950s Hammer Horror films. However, with Mr. Cullen and family, Meyer offers something new to the genre.

Throughout this progression, the image of the vampire has undergone a more or less subtle transformation in its representation, as others have pointed out (Hjelm; Ramsland).   Hjelm’s notion of the shifting paradigms of vampirism within film is apt.  For Hjelm, the old paradigm is reflective of vampires as demonic, motivated by malevolence and desire.  For example, the original film vampire, Max Schreck’s Nosferatu, (a name which means, significantly, “living corpse”) had nothing whatsoever about him to attract the viewer; he may have had a certain fascination, but it was the fascination of horror; one would not have been tempted to share a quiet evening with him.  He was foreign, totally other.  Human only in form, he could never be mistaken for anything other than the dangerous monsterⁱ he was.  In comparison, the new paradigm sees vampires as motivated by survival and power, and represented as sexualized and sexual creatures.ⁱⁱ

This, of course, accords with the early folk beliefs about vampires; at times little more than vaguely animate sacks of blood, they were monstrous of essence.  They generally sought no refuge among human society, polite or otherwise (although there were some folkloric exceptions) (D. Keyworth). Indeed early folk-lore would tell that vampires were the reanimated corpses of the ‘other’ in society – of sinners, the unbaptized, heathens, prostitutes,  black magicians, suicides,  or people whose corpses had been in contact with various animals (Miller A Dracula Handbook; Spence; Johnson).  More unfortunate, however, are those babies who were believed to become vampires because a cat (a symbol of evil) had jumped over their cot (Holte).  However, there was still something that set vampires apart from the “normal” run of humanity, an example of the sociological phenomena known as “othering” (Canales).

Maria Spelleri: The Phenomenon of the Greek Revenant Background and an Annotated Bibliography

Maria Spelleri, State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota Dept. of Language and Literature 

Many European cultures have legends of a creature resembling a kind of revenant or vampire. These legends did not start with Stoker’s Dracula , but rather some have seeds in ancient times or late antiquity, and there are certainly early modern stories documented from the 16 th century C.E. and onward. In Greece, the revenant legend known as the vrykólakas in most of the country and katakhánas in Crete (Summers 221) is one of the oldest documented vampiric legends of Europe. It is also one of the most interesting legends because of how widespread and long-lasting it has been throughout Greece. 

Research into the vrykólakas legend of Greece can take one down many paths. One potential path is scientific, such as a belief generated by the mysteries of illness, plague, or primitive understanding of death processes; another is socio-political, as connected to the psyche of a nation torn between modernity and the returning specter of it its “dead” classical past. Another possible research path is to probe the philosophical depth of Greek beliefs throughout history regarding the body and soul, and the relationship of the dead and the living, or perhaps a folkloric approach, looking for archetypal symbols in vrykólakas traditions. Yet another research direction is psychological, the belief in the vrykólakas as a satisfier of unconscious needs, or to go a step further, anthropological, as a satisfier of unconscious or unexpressed societal needs. 

The bibliography annotated at the end of this brief paper provides resources for many of these research avenues, the great potential of research tracks identified only after study of these resources and consideration of the contributions they make to piecing together the very complex picture of the belief in the vrykólakas. Beginning researchers may find this collection useful because in addition to sources that are direct inquiries into the vrykólakas , there are other sources which, while only briefly mentioning the vrykólakas in relation to a wider field, for example, of law, or linguistics, or Freudian psychology, allow the scholar to place the vrykólakas legend within a specific theoretical framework. Moreover, to determine how the vrykólakas is unique or similar to revenants of other European cultures, there are also a few sources that provide a more general background into the vampire phenomenon; however, many well-known and general texts and papers on vampires have been omitted from the bibliography as they can be found in other annotated lists. Overall, the collection defined in this bibliography is a solid starting point for generating research questions related to the Greek vrykólakas . 

Manifestation of the belief in the vrykólakas appears throughout all the regions of Greece and has endured several centuries. One theory accounting for its persistence is that the "existence" of the vrykólakas provides an important benefit to the local community. However, before examining the societal benefits that have allowed the legend to persist, it is important to note the essential “Greek-ness” of the belief. This is because despite many contributing factors to the evolution of the belief, the Greek vrykólakas is not an imported phenomenon and is not within the typical sphere of the legends of undead in Europe. It is a uniquely Greek creation and quite possibly the first vampire legend found in Europe.

Katharina Mewald: The Emancipation of Mina? The Portrayal of Mina in Stoker’s Dracula and Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Journal of Dracula Studies 10 (2008)

[Katharina Mewald is a research assistant at the Department of English at the University of Vienna. Her research interests are Scottish and North American Studies as well as Film Studies.]

Over the last decades, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been reworked and translated into film versions – or at least provided inspiration for films – hundreds of times. Of the film versions which refer to Stoker as an important inspiration, Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) claims a very high degree of fidelity to its literary source. An analysis of Stoker’s novel and the film version by Coppola reveals crucial differences in the portrayal of characters, especially with respect to Mina (Murray) Harker. A central question is how far the depictions of Mina in the novel and film diverge. Even though he attempted an essentially faithful rendition, Coppola made one far-reaching alteration to Stoker’s original: the inclusion of the romance between Mina and Dracula, based on the identification of Mina as Dracula’s long-lost bride, Elisabeta. The reason for this may be found in economic considerations, which are likely to have demanded the film to be made attractive to a wider audience than the horror movie-goers. Additionally, it has been argued that Mina has been adapted to reflect the more modern and emancipated gender roles of women today, a contention that is open to challenge.

In Stoker’s novel, Mina is presented as the prototype of the ideal Victorian woman. Almost her whole existence is devoted to her future husband and she aspires to become a good wife and mother, the “angel of the house.” Jonathan Harker, during his business in Transylvania, refers to her only sporadically, in connection with cooking recipes and the like, suggesting her preoccupation with marriage and the household. Also in the correspondence between Mina and her friend Lucy Westenra, marriage is a frequent topic and seems to be everything they dream of. When Mina is finally married to Jonathan, she writes in her diary that she is “the happiest woman in all the wide world” and that her life will consist of “love and duty for all the days of [her] life” (Dracula 140).[1] This focus on marriage is linked to her strong sense of duty towards others and, most of all, Jonathan. When writing about being married, she mentions the “grave and sweet responsibilities [she has] taken upon [herself]” (139). This sense of duty can be observed in her motivation for writing her diary, which is to practise her shorthand and typewriting skills in order to be useful to her husband. She also learns the train timetable by heart “so that [she] may help Jonathan in case he is in a hurry” (241). Furthermore, she considers it her duty to support her husband emotionally: “I do believe that if he had not had me to lean on and to support him he would have sunk down” (223). Her sense of duty also entails the keeping up of appearances. An assistant schoolmistress who teaches etiquette to young girls, she is eager to be dressed adequately and behave properly at all times. During Lucy’s sleepwalking episode in Whitby, Mina gives her friend her own shoes and then dabs her own feet in mud so that passers-by will not notice her being barefoot. Also the fact that Mina deduces that Lucy cannot be sleepwalking outside the house because she is only wearing a nightdress comically underlines this characteristic trait. However, Mina obviously senses that these norms are somewhat too strict, as she writes that “you can’t go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself” (222 emphasis mine)[2] and decides to allow Jonathan to take her arm in the street.

Carmen Maria Andras: The Image of Transylvania in English Literature

Journal of Dracula Studies 1 (1999)

[Carmen Andras is a member of the Romanian Academy and the Institute for Social Human Researches in Tirgu-Mures, Transylvania.]

Labyrinthian Images

Strange representations of Romania can be the result of either real or imaginary travels to this country. As an expression of the freedom of movement, thought and decision, a journey  should represent a concrete way of communication with the Other. Besides the immediate pragmatic, economic or political purpose, the voyage expresses, in a psychoanalytical view, the profound desire of personal improvement, the knowledge and understanding of the Other, the need for new experiences and the effort of surpassing   your own condition, rather than mere  spatial movement. But not every traveller comes back home spiritually enriched. It depends on whether he views the Other in a contemplative or in a dominating way. The traveller is inevitably thrown into a foreign cultural labyrinth and faced with the challenge of building a sense of identity. If his own cultural fibres are powerful and rigid, the traveller will have difficulty dealing adequately with the foreign culture. The foreign country will remain an enciphered land, dark and hostile. Nevertheless, there is a way to achieve a new identity through self-discovery: a combination of knowledge of both the Other and the self.

     If we consider the English traveller in Romania, we can assert that, generally speaking, he belongs to the category of detached observer, who uses his  lenses “made in England” as a filter for value judgements. As a result, we enter the territory of prejudices, stereotypes and clichés, with their decisive effects upon the representations of the Other. They can seldom be avoided, harming interpersonal and even international relations. Unfortunately for us, the majority of British stereotypes concerning Romanians, which constitute the substance of this paper, circulate freely as absolute truth even today, some of them having acquired a mythical aura, as that of Count Dracula, the Transylvanian vampire, the monster who reigns over a labyrinthian realm.

     A few qualifications are necessary. I refer here only to literary images of Romania, to be distinguished from historical treatises by such scholars as Professors Keith Hitchins in America and Dennis Deletant, who followed the efforts of Eric D Tappe and Trevor J Hope in England. Furthermore, legendary images of Transylvania as the native land of the monstrous Dracula are  balanced by representations of the real Transylvania in the works of such scholars as Radu Florescu, Raymond McNally, Grigore Nandris, Denis Buican and  Elizabeth Miller.

     Not surprisingly, literary images of Transylvania as the home of the monster may offend the sensibility of many Romanian readers for whom Transylvania’s image is an ideal and even sacred one: it  represents the quintessence of the national history, a land blessed by God with all the possible beauty and richness, fertilized by the people’s tears and the heroes’ blood, the cradle of their Latin roots, source of the Romanian Enlightenment embodied in the Transylvanian School, and a province of a united Romania. Even though the positive representations surpass in number and quality the negative images, the latter have had a larger echo in the West, owing to their shocking character, and have developed into a literary sub-genre. That is why I have chosen them for this paper.

Paul S. McAlduff: The Publication of Dracula

Journal of Dracula Studies 14 (2012)

[Paul S. McAlduff is currently living in Kwangju, South Korea where he works as an English teacher and as a proofreader for the Journal of Power Electronics (Seoul).  He is also the founder and Managing Editor of www.bramstoker.org, a leading website dedicated to Bram Stoker and his work.]

I. Introduction

"I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much that will interest you.  These companions," and he laid his hand on some of the books, "have been good friends to me, and for some years past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me many, many hours of pleasure..."

       -Dracula Chapter 2 - Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued

Bram Stoker was showing what a keen observer of human nature he was when he wrote this passage.  For many people, books are indeed good, familiar friends.  However, for some readers they are much more than friends.  For these people, books are more akin to a lover whose presence fills them with warmth and comfort.  Of course, such people expect a lot more from a book than the average reader.  They want to know everything about it.  They want to know where and when and how it came to be.  And, it would seem that there are a good many people who feel this way about Bram Stoker's Dracula.  For decades, debates have surrounded such questions as when did Stoker sign a contract with his publisher, when was his masterpiece given the title Dracula, when was it first published, and which edition came out first.  This article has been written with the aim of providing answers to some of these questions while shedding new light on others.

II. The Contract

According to the Sotheby's; Literature, History & Illustrated Books; 10 July 2001 catalogue, three of Stoker's publishing contracts were to be "Sold by order of "Constable & Co."  The contracts were for all three of the books he published with Archibald Constable and Company (hereafter Archibald Constable).  Lot 100 "Stoker, Bram.  The Original Publishing Contract for Dracula, One Entirely in Bram Stoker's Hand" consisted of two copies of the contract, and was expected to sell for between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds (67-70).  Lot 101 "Stoker, Bram.  Two publishing contracts and a letter" consisted of the contracts for The Watter's Mou' and The Shoulder of Shasta plus a signed letter from Stoker to "Ryllmann," and was expected to sell for 3,000 to 5,000 pounds (71).  A copy of the publishing contract for Dracula, written in Stoker’s hand, and a typed copy of clause nine with his signature have been reproduced in Bram Stoker's Dracula; A Documentary Journey into Vampire Country and the Dracula Phenomenon, edited by Elizabeth Miller (246-248), and a transcription of the handwritten copy is available in the Appendix of this paper.

Anne-Marie Finn: Whose Dracula is it Anyway?Deane, Balderston and the World Famous Vampire Play

Journal of Dracula Studies 1 (1999)

[A graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Toronto, Anne-Marie Finn is an internet researcher in Toronto and an executive member of the Canadian Chapter, Transylvanian Society of Dracula.]

Bram Stoker’s Dracula has accomplished something that almost no other novel has ever done: it has been thoroughly embraced by Western popular culture. From Halloween costumes to breakfast cereal, from books to movies, to a multitude of merchandise, “Dracula” is everywhere. The title is one of the most instantly recognized in the history of publishing and readily conjures up the image of a black-caped villain who preys upon members of an unsuspecting British society. This is the image most often associated with the character but it does not derive from Stoker. It originated on the stage. The purpose of this discussion is to examine the transmission of the text of Dracula from the novel into its first stage adaptations.

Bram Stoker was quite familiar with the conventions of the stage. He worked as acting manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London for seventeen years and was closely associated with the well-known actor Sir Henry Irving (Skal, Introduction vii). In 1897, Stoker went to the trouble of actually writing a stage version of Dracula in order to protect the copyright of the plot from unauthorized stage adaptations. According to some sources, Stoker had tried on several occasions to convince Henry Irving to be part of such a production (Skal, Introduction viii; Ludlam 123). However, upon seeing Stoker’s copyright adaptation performed at the Lyceum, Henry Irving was rumored to pronounce it “dreadful” (Ludlam 123). The actor would never play Dracula and Dracula was never again staged under Stoker’s supervision at the Lyceum or any other theatre.

Stoker died in 1912 but Dracula, in proper vampire fashion, would find life after death as a theatrical production. In 1924, having failed to convince anyone else to attempt it, Hamilton Deane, English actor/producer, approached Bram Stoker’s widow, Florence, for the right to produce Dracula on stage (Ludlam 171-72). At this time, Florence was in the middle of a difficult legal battle concerning Nosferatu, the unauthorized German film version of Dracula. According to David J Skal in Hollywood Gothic, she was in a desperate financial situation, with Dracula as nearly her only real means of support, and she saw the financial potential of Hamilton Deane's production. She also recognized the lack of quality in the production, which had been written in only four weeks, but as Skal sums it up, “she needed the money” (59).

Dracula: the Vampire Play toured successfully in England from 1924-1927. American producer Horace Liveright witnessed for himself the phenomenon of Dracula (Skal, Hollywood Gothic 65) and saw its potential, though he was unimpressed by Deane’s writing. He solicited a second playwright, John L Balderston, to rewrite the dialogue. Of course, they would first need Florence Stoker’s permission. Balderston acted as mediator between Stoker and Liveright (whom she disliked) and succeeded in securing the rights for the play. Balderston claimed that though he used virtually none of Deane’s original dialogue (about twenty lines), he only included his name as playwright when he saw that the production could be successful (Skal, Hollywood Gothic 81). Liveright then produced Dracula: The Vampire Play in Three Acts for Broadway.^[1] 

Mark Bernard: 'A Foreign Man in a Fog': Robert Siodmak, Lon Chaney Jr, and Son of Dracula

Journal of Dracula Studies 14 (2012)

Mark Bernard holds a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies, with emphasis in Film, Media, and Culture, from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. His work has appeared in several journals and anthologies. He is co-author of the forthcoming book The Politics of Food and Film and is currently at work on a book-length manuscript titled, Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film.

For several years, many film scholars have invested in the idea of an “émigré narrative,” a genealogy that traces such noted exiled German filmmakers as Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak as they fled Hitler’s Germany and ended up in Hollywood where they were supposedly able, through the films they made there, to express themselves, convey exilic despair, tap into cultural anxieties, and critique the fascist state they had left behind. Edward Dimendberg offers a succinct summary of the “émigré narrative,” locating its roots in film scholarship that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and claiming that this “underlying supposition of German creative predominance still remains an article of faith among many film historians and critics” (114). According to these proponents of the “émigré narrative,” exiled German filmmakers were able, to paraphrase Lutz Koepnick, to take German cultural material, put it in their pockets, carry it across the Atlantic, and “simply plug into a different context” (“Doubling” 84), in this case, Hollywood.

Even though the belief in the “German school of Hollywood” remains, as Dimendberg puts it, “an article of faith” for many film scholars (118, 114), the émigré narrative has come under criticism in recent years. These challenges have come from a variety of fronts, one of the most significant of which has been the question of authorship. Dimendberg writes that “Critically scrutinizing the auteurism and romantic belief in the self-expression of the film director” has played a large role in dismantling the émigré narrative and asks, “Working initially as vulnerable outsiders in a film production system and language that were both new to them, how much autonomy and creative input could the German  émigrés . . . contribute to their films, subject as they were to the influence of Hollywood studio executives, producers, censors, novelists, and screenplay writers?” (118). Thomas Elsaesser also challenges the notion of German filmic self-expression in Hollywood, claiming that the émigré narrative ignores “the complex decision-making process of Hollywood picture making by focusing on an implausible degree of directorial self-expression” (442n). In other words, scholars such as Elsaesser warn that it is untenable to argue that these German-born filmmakers were able to express themselves in Hollywood due to the multiple agents –both industrial and cultural– at work during studio-era Hollywood. The émigré director (and, for that matter, most other directors as well) was simply one cog in a complex machine that produces the “meaning” of filmic texts. 

Leanne Page: Phonograph, shorthand, typewriter: High performance technologies in Bram Stoker's Dracula

Victorian Network Volume 3, Number 2 (Winter 2011)
Leanne Page
(English and Film Studies, University of Alberta)

Abstract

The theoretical concept of technological performance has emerged only recently with the publication of Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance in 2001.

McKenzie develops a general theory of performance based around the development of three performance paradigms: cultural performance, organizational performance (or performance management), and technological performance. In his examination of the techno-performance paradigm, he focuses primarily on late twentieth and early twenty-first century 'high performance' technologies such as computers, guided missiles and space shuttles. While he acknowledges that the concept of performance does not apply only to technologies in this period, his analysis implicitly suggests that high performance technologies are a unique invention of the modern age. This essay confronts McKenzie's restriction of technoperformance to the post-WWII period by demonstrating how technologies performed and were seen to perform in the late nineteenth century through a techno-performance reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The late Victorian period saw startling innovations in information and communication technology (such as the overseas telegraph, the typewriter, and the gramophone), which were marketed as high performance technologies, though not in those words. To contextualise my reading of Dracula, I examine contemporary Victorian advertisements for communication technologies to demonstrate how such technologies were viewed as high performance products by Victorian advertisers and consumers.

Technology in Dracula has usually been read as a metaphor. I employ McKenzie's concept of techno performance to examine the performative functions of technology in Dracula that have not yet been explored by Victorianist scholarship. McKenzie notes two challenges posed by techno-performance: first, the challenge posed by a developer to his/her technological product, to perform or be classified as obsolete; and, second, the challenge posed by technology to its user to perform or be regarded as outmoded. I argue that Stoker's Dracula takes up both of these challenges. Emergent technologies sometimes perform in unexpected and potentially disruptive ways, much like the space shuttle Challenger cited by McKenzie; at the same time, such technologies oblige their users to perform in unexpected and disruptive ways. This essay examines emergent technologies in Dracula to highlight the relationship between individual and technological performance in the late nineteenth century.

When we reflect on performance in the Victorian period, we are unlikely to consider the model of technological performance. Technological performance itself is not a particularly well known concept: it has only recently emerged with the publication of Jon McKenzie's Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance in 2001.

McKenzie develops a general theory of performance based around the development of three performance paradigms: cultural performance, organizational performance (or performance management) and technological performance (or technoLeanne Page Victorian Network Volume 3, Number 2 (Winter 2011)

performance). This essay will confront McKenzie's restriction of techno-performance to the post-WWII period by demonstrating how communication technologies performed and were seen to perform in the late nineteenth century through a technoperformance reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Technology in Dracula has usually been read as a metaphor, but I will employ McKenzie's concept of technoperformance

to examine the performative functions of technology in Dracula that have not yet been explored by Victorianist scholarship. I will begin with a critique of McKenzie's concept of techno-performance. Through an examination of depictions of communication technologies in late Victorian print media, I will demonstrate that the technologies we see in Dracula were conceived of by the late Victorians as high performance technologies. I will then use my expanded version of technoperformance to conduct a techno-performative reading of Dracula, and to examine emergent technologies to highlight the relationship between individual and

technological performance and performative failures in the late nineteenth century.1

Maria Lindgren Leavenworth: “What are you?” Fear, desire, and disgust in the Southern Vampire Mysteries and True Blood

Maria Lindgren Leavenworth, Umeå University

Among the monsters that populate written pages, stages and large and small screens, the figure of the vampire, often both dashing and terrifying, most clearly evokes the emotions fear and desire. The two guiding emotions are particularly closely intertwined in the many contemporary vampire narratives which are based in the romance genre rather than in traditional horror. The intermingling of the emotions occurs on two levels: inside and outside the text itself. Focusing on the latter―the reader, viewer and listener’s affects―Jeffrey Cohen argues that the “escapist fantasies” the monster provides as well as the “fantasies of aggression, domination and inversion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delimited and permanently liminal space” (1996: 17). This space, then, is figured not as the monster itself, but as the audience’s temporary experience. Significantly, many discussions about vampire texts follow in this vein, with focus on what the monster represents to the listener, reader or viewer and seeing the experience of the text itself as a site of emotional meaning. In what follows, interest is rather in how fear and desire are mapped onto a liminal body, and how characters voice these emotions and act according to them.

Whereas vampire representations of earlier time periods may have provoked fear and repulsion simply because “vampirism as such was evil” (Carter 1999: 27), there is a noticeable trend in contemporary narratives to represent vampires as attractive, romantic heroes. These sympathetic vampires, rather than being based on the Dracula figure, are modeled on the early 19th-century Romantic instantiations created by John Polidori and Lord Byron, and they have ties to the glamorous vampires as envisaged by Anne Rice (Williamson 2005: 29-50). In contrast to Rice’s novels, however, romance and love between human and vampire (rather than between vampire and vampire) are now in focus. Such is the case in Charlaine Harris’ as yet unfinished Southern Vampire Mysteries series (2001 ―), and Alan Ball’s adaptation in the hitherto five seasons of the HBO-series True Blood (2008-2012). Despite Fear, desire and disgust in the SVMs and True Blood 37 differences on the plot level, the adaptation is fairly faithful to the novels in terms of setting and, with a few exceptions, characterizations. In the following discussion written and visual text will often be seen as forming one, more or less cohesive, text world, which will be seen in relation to other, past and contemporary, narratives to tease out the vampire’s function, particularly in the depictions of fear and desire. Of interest is also how the emotion of disgust is figured in the text world, both in relation to the seeming paradox inherent in human attraction to the revenant, and to the vampires’ reaction to the prolonged contact wit humans in the supposedly multicultural society.

Erik Butler: Writing and Vampiric Contagion in Dracula

Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies Issue 2 (Fall 2002), pages 13-32

Bram Stoker’s Dracula sums up, within the space of a few hundred pages, diffuse fears and tensions of the society in which it originated. Jonathan Harker, the valiant English foil to the diabolical Transylvanian Count, describes the events he witnesses as “nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance” (67). Following this interpretive lead provided by the novel, recent criticism has fleshed out the historical backdrop for Dracula and shown how the novel reflects the emergence of consumerist mass culture (Wicke), the rise of a professional class (Day), and the broad-scale mobilization of electrically-driven forms of communication (Winthrop-Young). Stoker’s work remains timely more than one hundred years after its initial publication because its eponymous antihero draws his substance and strength as a monster from anxieties and uncertainties that material transformations in the conditions of everyday life produce. Simply replace colonialism with globalization, ministries with multinationals, and telegraphy with the internet: the Count continues to offer an allegory for economic, bureaucratic, and technological changes in the world.

Dracula renews its modernity by means of artful ambiguity in which the up-to-date and the out-of-date converge. This essay seeks to demonstrate how modern writing practices and recording technologies act as the gateway through which corrosive, archaic forces erupt into the present and threaten the future in Stoker’s novel. As Jacques Derrida has stressed, writing operates where a human carrier for information is absent; it therefore acts not just as the bearer of data but as the vehicle of uncertainty and indeterminacy as well. New instances of communication reinforce the timeless connection between the grapheme and disquieting impersonality. Stenography, telegraphy, the typewriter, and the phonograph, although nineteenth-century innovations, serve as pathways to atavistic horror by conjuring up the contagious and unanswerable anonymity that characterizes the undead. Dracula continues to solicit critical attention (especially by deconstructionist and media studies scholars) because it delights in scrambling the sexual, legal, and moral codes by which the socio-cultural order consolidates itself. By throwing established systems into crisis, vampirism exposes their historical contingency. The outbreak of the past in the present signifies the continued existence of primitive barbarism in a seemingly enlightened age. Although the story told in Stoker’s novel stresses the Eastern foreignness and antiquity of the vampire, the text itself makes it clear that the monster without a reflection in the mirror in fact represents a horrific side of Western modernity.

Patrick Gray: Shakespeare’s Vampire: Hubris in Coriolanus, Meyer’s Twilight, and Stoker’s Dracula

Patrick GRAY (2011). "Shakespeare’s Vampire: Hubris in Coriolanus, Meyer’s Twilight, and Stoker’s Dracula". Shakespeare en devenir - Les Cahiers de La Licorne - N°5 - 2011 | Shakespeare en devenir | Violence and popular culture: from tale to stage.

Abstract

Shakespeare’s work long antedates the initial influx of Eastern European legends about vampires into Western Europe in the eighteenth century. In Coriolanus, however, Shakespeare does present violence, including the verbal or emotional violence of scorn and insult, as a kind of narcissistic feeding upon others. Using metaphors drawn from politics and economics, as well as hunting and the consumption of food, Shakespeare foregrounds the opposition between two very different forms of interpersonal relatedness: healthy narcissism, represented by the Roman marketplace, and unhealthy narcissism or “pride,” symbolized by the “lonely dragon,” Coriolanus. Pride aims at self-sufficient, one-sided control over one’s own self-esteem, independent of the opinions of others. Healthy narcissism is in contrast a reciprocal, voluntary sharing of the burden of self-esteem regulation. The contempt that is so characteristic of Coriolanus, including outright violence, is in other words a maladaptive form of self-validation, forcing others to metabolize his own disavowed shame, rather than suffer it himself, or else plead for consolation. Drawing upon Aristotle’s definition of hubris, as well as Demosthenes’ forensic oratory, I then explain that the ancient Greeks developed a very precise category for such behavior. The term hubris, often thought to mean simply presumption or arrogance, in fact does not refer to a state of mind at all, but instead to a type of action: “outrageous” conduct designed to humiliate someone else. Shakespeare represents this kind of hubris in Coriolanus as a cannibalistic preying upon others, like that of a monster or a predatory animal.  Legends about vampires can be understood in like manner as a representation of narcissism. In our own time, narcissism is more likely to be expressed in snubs and slights than in the spectacular violence and scathing censure of Coriolanus’ Rome. Nevertheless, the basic impulse is the same. In order to explain Shakespeare’s representation of the connection between pride and hubris, I compare his paragon of unhealthy narcissism, Coriolanus, to the variation on the myth of the vampire currently popular in books, television, and movies such as the Twilight and Vampire Diaries series. I also distinguish this new, twenty-first-century vampire from Bram Stoker’s nineteenth-century version. Present-day versions of the vampire legend no longer stress the sinfulness of sexual libertinism, but instead, like Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, the social disruptiveness of misguided narcissism.

Holly J. McBee: Vampires Do(n’t) Exist: Using Past and Present Technologies to Make Dracula Real

Journal of Dracula Studies 13 (2011)

[Dr. Holly J. McBee received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2007 and is currently an assistant professor at Dickinson State University in North Dakota. She teaches a range of composition and literature classes and continues her research in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature.]                                                                                  

In a scene from the 1943 film, Son of Dracula, one of the characters reads Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. Since the characters in the film are attempting to stop Dracula, the implication is that this novel is not a work of fiction, but rather one of truth. The novel has moved beyond representing Victorian fears into a “How to Kill a Vampire” handbook because vampires are real—at least within the confines of the film—and need to be destroyed. There are many other examples in twentieth- and twenty-first-century fiction, both literary and cinematic, that take this approach of making Dracula or vampires real. One of the most recent versions of this method can be found in the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, which have been adapted by HBO into the show True Blood. In these works, vampires are very real and have “come out of the coffin” to join the rest of the world. One of best known vampire writers, Anne Rice, also takes this approach. In her novel, The Queen of the Damned, the third in the Vampire Chronicles series, she writes of the author of Interview with the Vampire “The author’s name is a pseudonym, and the royalty checks go to a nomadic young man who resists all our attempts at contact” (173). Here, Anne Rice is the pseudonym, implying that maybe these vampire stories are true. Of course the idea that vampires and other supernatural aspects are real is not a contemporary invention. Gothic novels from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often presented some discovered manuscript that masquerades as an authentic account documenting some supernatural phenomena.

Though written in 1897, the format of Dracula resembles the epistolary novels of the eighteenth century since it is comprised primarily of personal letters and journal entries. Dracula is not the only nineteenth-century novel to use this technique. Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White uses a similar approach, and in fact reviews of Dracula mention this comparison.[1] The epistolary style used in the eighteenth-century novel was meant to create verisimilitude about the events described within the letters and journals. Furthermore, the eighteenth-century gothic element of the discovered or personally written manuscript was employed for the same effect. In the case of Dracula, the combination of the epistolary and gothic techniques is effective in making the supernatural elements of the story believable. Therefore, if the narrative methods suggest authenticity, then the content perhaps is authentic too.

Tara Elliott: “Buffy vs. Dracula”’s Use of Count Famous (Not drawing “crazy conclusions about the unholy prince”)

Journal of Dracula Studies 8 (2006)

[Tara Elliott is a PhD candidate in English at York University. Her dissertation examines the potential of the genre of speculative fiction for feminist readings.] 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s episode “Buffy vs. Dracula” is not an attempt to portray Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula accurately, but instead to comment upon the ways that it is already being used in the series. The characterization in this episode defies a merely allegorical interpretation because it distributes representation in a more complicated fashion. There is no simple one-to-one ratio of literary figures and television characters. Because Buffy is characterized as both Mina and Lucy simultaneously in this episode and she eventually repels Dracula (without actually defeating him), it seems that the damsel in thrall, but who carries a pointy object, ultimately triumphs. However, a closer examination of Buffy’s strategy during her physical confrontation with Dracula indicates that she is greatly indebted to Dracula’s character Renfield; consequently, the episode maintains the television series’s purview of championing outsiders.

Joss Whedon’s television creation Buffy the Vampire Slayer began airing in January 1997 and ran for seven seasons, finishing in 2003. “Buffy vs. Dracula” is the first episode in season five, which aired 26 September 2000 in Canada and the United States. For more than three years, more than half of its total run, Buffy was autonomous from Stoker’s character Dracula. Although it borrows heavily from Dracula’s vampiric tradition, the television program works out its own mythology. As Stafford notes,

Erin Newcomb: Between Reason and Faith: Breaking the Status Quo in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Journal of Cuneiform Studies 13 (2011)

  

[Dr. Erin Newcomb completed her Ph.D. at Pennsylvania State University; she now teaches literature and composition courses at The State University of New York at New Paltz. Her research interests focus primarily on religion, feminism, and literature.]

Perhaps because the theological elements of Stoker’s tale can simultaneously be viewed as epistemological issues, the text’s religious symbolism is largely ignored by critics; I contend that Dracula’s religiosity is neither arbitrary nor simply a plot device to forward different social messages. Indeed, the religious images are critical fodder for analysis precisely because they signify characters’ shifting ideologies about knowledge and the know-ability of the world. The “Englishness” re-established at the text’s conclusion is not the same “Englishness” from the beginning of Dracula; the reversion to the ordinary is possible only because of the crusaders’ acceptance of and extraordinary action against the evil spiritual forces that seek to destroy everyday life. The collective knowledge, memory, and activity of the select group that vanquishes Dracula allow the population at large to remain ignorant about the real conditions of the spiritual world. As Harker states in his final “Note,” “[w]e were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document.” Based on this lack of textual support, Harker admits, “[w]e could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story.” Yet it is Van Helsing, that master of superstitious lore, who gains the final word: “[w]e want no proofs; we ask none to believe us!” (Stoker 380). Dismissing textual evidence in lieu of the embodied evidence of the Harkers’ son, Van Helsing adeptly summarizes the epistemological dilemma of Dracula—that there are ways of knowing essential to the preservation of an orderly world, even if those epistemologies cannot be contained within a text, but are incorporated in sacramental imagery and embodied by the crusaders’ offspring. Only turning to the religious elements exemplifies the extent to which Stoker’s text relies on readers’ acceptance (if only within the narrative world he creates) of supernatural epistemologies as valid meaning-making strategies. And only those supernatural epistemologies ultimately explain why the anxiety persists even when the status quo seems to be reestablished.