Patterns, Symbols and Themes in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2024)

Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Handbook for Understanding the Inexplicable

British Fantasy Society Journal , 2021

Permeable Borders: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Its Sources

“The common darkness where the dreams abide:” Perspectives on Irish Gothic and Beyond, 2018

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Century of Publication and Critical Response

Dracula’s place within the literary culture of the 1890s is as problematic and at times as contradictory as its text. The novel presents the allure of the forbidden – a surrender to pleasure, sexual ambiguity, superstition, seduction by the foreign or decadent “other” – only to assert suppression of the forbidden by traditional Victorian masculine morality. However, the victory of that morality is never final: the death of the Count cannot undo the transgressions he has enacted or those enacted by the other characters in response. The novel’s uneasy movement between competing states of being, its different layers of romance and horror, the sexual elements of the plot and its perceived commentaries upon gender, race, and empire, are a part of the appeal to both readers and critics alike. Certainly, the novel’s longevity can be connected directly to the varied receptions and the myriad layers of possible personal and critical interpretation.

Archetypal Images Reflected in Dracula Novel by Bram Stoker

JURNAL BASIS, 2021

This research discusses archetypal in the novel Dracula written by Stoker. The purpose of this research is to find out some archetypal images in the novel. Some of the problems that exist today are readers who do not know the meaning of archetypal images contained in a novel. The data used in this study were taken from the novel Dracula written by Stoker. In this research, the researcher applies Carl Jung's theory. This study uses descriptive qualitative research, in qualitative research the key concepts, ideas, and processes studied are part of the central phenomenon. The result of this research is that the novel Dracula has many archetypal images contained in it. The archetypes in Dracula are: sun, color, the archetype women, and wise old man. Based on the results of this study, the researcher concludes that there are several archetypes in Dracula's novel that are used to convey implied meanings through the symbols used.

Monstrous Literature: The Case of Dacre Stoker’s Dracula the Undead

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Critical Feast, An Annotated Reference of Early Reviews and Reactions, 1897-1913 [uncorrected proof excerpt]

2012

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA: THE CRITICAL FEAST An Annotated Reference of Early Reviews and Reactions, 1897-1913 Compiled and Annotated, with an Introduction, by John Edgar Browning Bibliographical Afterword by J. Gordon Melton PRAISE: “Dryden said of The Canterbury Tales that “here is God’s plenty,” and one might say the same thing about Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Critical Feast. Browning has assembled an exhaustive collection of contemporary reviews of Dracula, reviews that put Stoker’s novel into context and demonstrate its almost instantaneous popularity. In addition, The Critical Feast includes copies of early covers and photographs of Stoker. This is a book that every student of Dracula will be proud to own…and pore over, a feast for the eyes and for the mind.” —Dr. Carol A. Senf, Bram Stoker (Gothic Authors: Critical Revisions) and The Critical Response to Bram Stoker “Both scholars and devoted fans will rejoice in Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Critical Feast. This exhaustive compilation fulfills a long-standing need in the realm of Dracula studies and provides a valuable fresh perspective on the early popular and critical reception of Stoker’s masterpiece.” —Dr. Margaret L. Carter, The Vampire in Literature: A Critical Bibliography and Different Blood: The Vampire as Alien “This meticulously researched book puts to rest misconceptions long held by many Dracula scholars (myself included) about the reception of Stoker's novel. A superb achievement and a scholar’s delight!” —Dr. Elizabeth Miller, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: A Documentary Journey into Vampire Country and the Dracula Phenomenon and Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula: A Facsimile Edition SYNOPSIS: There is a common misconception that the early critical reception of Bram Stoker’s famed vampire novel, Dracula (1897), was “mixed.” This reference book sets out to dispel this myth en force by offering the most exhaustive collection of early critical responses to Stoker’s novel ever assembled, including some 91 reviews and reactions as well as 36 different press notices, many of which have not been seen in print since they appeared over 100 years ago. What these early critical responses reveal about Dracula’s writing is that it was predominantly seen by early reviewers and responders to parallel, even supersede the Gothic horror works of such canonical writers as Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, and Edgar Allan Poe. Accompanying the critical responses are annotations and an introduction by the editor, a bibliographical afterword by J. Gordon Melton, 32 illustrations, and a bibliography."

Bram Stoker's Dracula : The Master of Terror and His Impact on Popular Culture

Old Masters in New Interpretations : Readings in Literature and Visual Culture, 2016

The article examines how the figure of Dracula became the driving force of changes within the Gothic convention of the 20th century, how exactly the character became re-invented throughout the decades in the field of cinema, and what influences these transformations have on the present culture. The paper focuses on the origins of the Dracula novel and its main antagonist by presenting the major traditional and literary influences which led to the creation of the titular villain. Next, the character is juxtaposed with its Gothic predecessors along with the imaginings of vampires in local folklore beliefs. Finally, the article presents cinematic trends of adapting the vampire figure for the silver screen. The comparative analysis aims to show that 1) the character of Dracula derives from the classical canon of the Gothic fiction and 2) his uniqueness and embodiment of all stereotypical traits has a major influence on the creation and re-invention of vampires in modern popular culture.

Straining the Limits of Interpretation: Bram Stoker's Dracula and Its Eastern European Contexts

The Tao of Dracula - Bram Stoker's Rhetoric of Fiction

In this paper we are mapping those segments of Bram Stoker's novel that "hide" behind the strikingly obvious surface plotting of the narrative, yet generate the narrative discourse with a force that indicates that we may consider these "slips of narration" to constitute the narrative structure and discourse with a much greater impact (c.f., "nothing is too small" [146]) than that of the "obvious"- or surface layer/s of the book. This other discourse is the foundation of the house of fiction in which Dracula keeps on putting on various faces (personae). When in the house, we do not necessarily see any mark of this, yet the house would and could not be standing without it.

The Genealogy of Bram Stoker's Dracula

2020

British author of Irish origin, Bram Stoker’s gothic horror novel, Dracula is the most reputed and popular example of the vampire literature that first emerged in seventeenth-century poetry. The first of the two key concepts that this thesis analyzes is the concept of “meme†, which was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, that can be defined as a thought, symbol or application transmitted from one individual to another via oral, written and visual methods and means of communication within a culture, replicates itself, transforms, responds to selective pressures, and the second concept is the memetic evolution of the vampire into the character, Dracula by Bram Stoker in Romantic ballads and Victorian horror narratives within the context of Evolutionary Literary Criticism which was theorized by Professor Joseph Carroll. In this regard, the qualities of the vampire phenotype that the Dracula meme inherited some qualities from its antecedent works of vampi...