Why Dracula is a Gothic Novel The horror story Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, is a thrilling novel about the notorious vampire, Dracula, and about a group of men and women who suffered from his evil and fought back. This novel, written in 1897, is one of the most famous gothic novels, and one of the most famous pieces of literature still to this day. The setting of the novel, the terminology, and the deep emotion that Stoker used allows the reader, and literary critics, to classify Dracula as Gothic Literature. The elements that Dracula contains to make it gothic include the setting of a castle, a suspenseful atmosphere, dreams and visions, inexplicable events, overwhelming emotions, distressed women, metonymy of horror, and of course gothic vocabulary. For a novel to be considered gothic, it must contain certain elements; Dracula reflects many of these unique principles.
The settings presented are also dark and eeire, and Dracula himself lives in solitude with no other companion. The film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ is just as reliant on the conventions of Gothic fiction (a genre that was extremely popular in the early nineteenth century when the book was written) as the novel, making it not only follow nicely in the novel’s footsteps but also proving to be a chilling delight for the viewing audience. Gothic fiction traditionally includes elements such as wild landscapes, eerie castles, darkness, and decay, isolation, security, the supernatural and innocent maidens threatened by unspeakable evil. Stoker has utilized all of the above and consequently, as does this film adaptation. An example of this would be in the theme of isolation as Dracula’s castle is hidden in the recesses of Transylvania, kept away from civilization of any description.
Forward thinking in Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Stoker challenges the Victorian mind in ways that had never been done before. The novel is written in a way to fool readers to think the story is true. He covers subjects of religion, sex and the supernatural in an attempt to expand the shallow thinking of the time. The character of Dracula rarely appears in the text after the first few chapters to create a sense of mystique for Dracula, and by doing so proves Dracula is supernatural.
“How does ‘Shadow of a Vampire’ appropriate the earlier texts of Nosferatu and Dracula and create something new?” Shadow of a Vampire (2000), directed by Elias Merhige, is a film that recreates the making of the 1922 film ‘Nosferatu’. Shadow of a Vampire distorts the reality of what actually went on whilst filming Nosferatu yet appropriates the text to make it entertaining and scary. As Nosferatu is based on Dracula by Bram Stoker, Shadow of a Vampire also becomes an appropriation of this text, mainly using the elements of gothic to create what is essentially a horror movie. An appropriation that adds to the scary nature is the behaviour of Nosferatu director Friedrich Murnau. Murnau’s behaviour is questionable from the early stages of the film.
As preoccupied with propriety as the Victorian era was, it always surprises me to read a classic from this period that could just as easily have been written a hundred years later. Dracula, a novel by Bram Stoker, was published in 1897, but it reads like any horror novel written today. The novel is so modern, in fact, that it has inspired many movie adaptations, two of the most recent being Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992 and Van Helsing in 2004. Toward the beginning of the novel, when Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula's castle, Harker's journal tells how he was waylaid by three female vampires while resting in an ancient section of the castle: "I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super-sensitive skin of my throat,
Paula Rashel Flyangolts Professor: K. Sanders English 151-9613 23 February, 2011 Superstition and Religion in Dracula Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is a novel that can be considered known throughout current culture, as it is a classic. Written in 1897, it is still one of the most popular books in literature. It is referred to as a horror story and is sure to indulge you. However, Stoker’s intention was not to petrify the people of Victorian times, who were the first people to be entertained by the novel. Stoker created the character of Dracula to teach the readers lessons and morals about life and its questionable attributes.
As a result, my reading of Dracula is a departure from most standard interpretation in that it revolves, not around the conquest of Evil by Good, but on the similarities between the two as it relates to the novel’s characters. More familiar with the numerous film interpretations than with Stoker’s novel, most modern readers are likely to be surprised by Dracula and its extremely topical themes, and both the setting and the method of narration which Stoker chose contribute to the sense of immediacy. Instead of taking place in a remote Transylvanian castle or a timeless and fictional “anywhere,” most of the action occurs in nineteenth-century London. Furthermore, Stoker de-emphasizes the novel’s mythic qualities by telling the story through a series of journal extracts, personal letters, and newspaper clippings- the very written record of everyday life. The narrative technique resembles a vast jigsaw puzzle of isolated and frequently insignificant facts; and it is only when the novel is
Matre1 Matt matre Lit form Mr. Hoerner 2-16-10 Bram’s Symbolic scenes In the book Dracula by Bram stoker, Many themes in the story represent a deep meaning, these themes usually reveal a major theme in the book, Bram uses many symbolic scenes that express deeper meanings, express an idea and clarify deeper meaning. One scene from the book Dracula by Bram stoker where symbolisms are used is when Lucy is sleepwalking in the night. When the ship crashes onshore and Dracula gets off. Lucy walks up to the seat that really is a grave, which is her favorite seat. Then Dracula finds her and bites her whereby he starts to drain her blood.
The events of Dracula’s life were played out in a region of the world that was still basically medieval, and superstitions of the Dark Ages were common. The general consensus among historians now is that Vlad adopted it from the Order of the Dragon, which he belong to starting at a young age. In spite of, the widespread view in Romania that the vampire connection has been deliberately emphasized in the west to undermine a figure that, for many Romanians, is something of a national hero and not the atrocious monster most made him out to
(Foster 16) Although in many cases evil does have to do with sex such as rape, I don’t believe it has everything to do with sex. During the Victorian era when all of these vampire stories were emerging in literature, Foster writes that since they couldn’t directly write about sex and sexuality, they found ways of transforming those taboo subjects and issues into other forms. (Foster 17) This may be true however he goes on to say that even today people write about vampires, ghosts, and werewolves to symbolize something that will imply something sexual. Since I was an avid reader of Twilight, I will have to defend my beloved novel and say it wasn’t all just about sex. There was evil in it but it wasn’t about some creepy old guy that wanted to take a young girl’s virginity.