Dracula, a Longman Cutural Edition by
From Longman's Cultural Edition series, this new edition of Dracula, edited by Andrew Elfenbein, recovers the cultural complexity of Bram Stoker's novel and offers a wide array of contextualizing documents, including contemporary reviews and articles about Eastern Europe, science, gender, and media. Rather than tracing Dracula through all his later incarnations, this edition offers ways to understand the late Victorian origins of Bram Stoker's remarkable book. While Dracula never simply reflects contemporary trends, reading it with knowledge of contemporary events and debates can clarify what may otherwise seem puzzling. Throughout, Stoker emphasizes that his vampire story takes place not in a hazy, fictional past, but in a sharply realized England of the 1890s. The materials in the sections of Cultural Contexts illuminate the references to Victorian culture in Stoker's version of this seemingly timeless story.
Dracula by
Since its publication in 1897, Dracula has enthralled generation after generation of readers with the same spellbinding power with which Count Dracula enthralls his victims. Though Bram Stoker did not invent vampires, and in fact based his character's life-in-death on extensive research in European folklore, his novel elevated the nocturnal creature to iconic stature, spawning a genre of stories and movies that flourishes to this day. But a century of imitations has done nothing to diminish the power of Stoker's tale. As his chilling, suave monster stalks his prey from a crumbling castle in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania to an insane asylum in England to the bedrooms of his swooning female victims, the drama is infused with a more and more exquisite measure of sensuality and suspense. Dracula is a classic of Gothic horror, an undying wellspring of modern mythology, and an irresistible entertainment.
The New Annotated Dracula by
In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker's contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact. Traveling through two hundred years of popular culture and myth as well as graveyards and the wilds of Transylvania, Klinger's notes illuminate every aspect of this haunting narrative (including a detailed examination of the original typescript of Dracula, with its shockingly different ending, previously unavailable to scholars). Klinger investigates the many subtexts of the original narrative--from masochistic, necrophilic, homoerotic, "dentophilic," and even heterosexual implications of the story to its political, economic, feminist, psychological, and historical threads. Employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers.
Dracula by
This edition of Bram Stoker's classic vampire story has an introduction and bibliography which draws on the latest scholarship, and detailed notes which explain literary, geographical, and technological allusions in the novel.
Dracula by
Acclaimed poet and playwright Liz Lochhead's Dracula stays refreshingly close to Bram Stoker's classic novel. Asked to adapt it by the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, she immersed herself in the book. 'After a sleepless night,' she writes in the Introduction, 'my hair was standing on end, what with the mad Renfield in his lunatic asylum eating flies and playing John the Baptist to his coming master... and with Lucy's description of her "dream" of flying with the red-eyed one above the lighthouse at Whitby, and Jonathan's "dream" of the three Vampire Brides' advances upon him and of their being repelled at the last minute by the furious Dracula... 'This was before I'd even got to the abducted children or "the loving hand" of Lucy's fiancé staking her through the heart... or that shocking rape-like bit where, with Mina's newly-wed husband Jonathan asleep in a flushed stupor by her side, Dracula, at her throat, takes his fill of her life's-blood... 'Still, what really attracted me to the story was Rule One for becoming a vampire-victim: "First of all you have to invite him in."' Liz Lochhead's stage adaptation of Dracula was first performed at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1985. Ideal for schools and drama groups, this Dracula is all the more chilling for the respect it shows for Stoker's original nightmare creation.
R E D by
Poetry. R E D is an erasure of Bram Stoker's Dracula. A long poem in 27 chapters, R E D excavates from Stoker's text an original narrative of violence, sexual abuse, power dynamics, vengeance, and feminist rage while wrestling with the complexities of gender, transition, and monsterhood.
The Transatlantic Gothic Novel and the Law, 1790-1860 by
Tracing the use of legal themes in the gothic novel, Bridget M. Marshall shows these devices reflect an outpouring of anxiety about the nature of justice. On both sides of the Atlantic, novelists like William Godwin, Mary Shelley, Charles Brockden Brown, and Hannah Crafts question the foundations of the Anglo-American justice system through their portrayals of criminal and judicial procedures and their use of found documents and legal forms as key plot devices. As gothic villains, from Walpole's Manfred to Godwin's Tyrrell to Stoker's Dracula, manipulate the law and legal system to expand their power, readers are confronted with a legal system that is not merely ineffective at stopping villains but actually enables them to inflict ever greater harm on their victims. By invoking actual laws like the Black Act in England or the Fugitive Slave Act in America, gothic novels connect the fantastic horrors that constitute their primary appeal with much more shocking examples of terror and injustice. Finally, the gothic novel's preoccupation with injustice is just one element of many that connects the genre to slave narratives and to the horrors of American slavery.
The Vampire in Nineteenth-Century Literature by
This volume looks at both the range among, and legacy of, vampires in the nineteenth century including race, culture, social upheaval, gender and sexuality, new knowledge and technology.
Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism by
Series Editor: Robert Lecker, McGill University Written in an easy-to-read, accessible style by teachers with years of classroom experience, Masterwork Studies are guides to the literary works most frequently studied in high school. Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books helpstudents to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers andexams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature. Each volume: Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text Uses clear, conversational language Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages Includes a chronology of the authors life and era Provides an overview of the historical context Offers a summary of its critical reception Lists primary and secondary sources and index
Anti-Semitism and British Gothic Literature by
Anti-Semitism and British Gothic Literature examines the Gothic's engagement with the Jewish Question and British national identity over the course of a century. Beginning with an exploration of Jewish demonology from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, Davison interprets the changing significance of the trans-national Wandering Jew in classic Gothic fiction who later migrates into Victorian realism. What emerges is the elucidation of an anti-Semitic 'spectropoetics' that convey how the spectres of Jewish difference and Jewish assimilation haunt British literature.
The Emergence of Irish Gothic Fiction by
This study provides a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the beginnings of Irish gothic fiction, maps the theoretical terrain covered by other critics, and puts forward a new history of the emergence of the genre in Ireland.
Dracula and the Eastern Question: British and French Vampire Narratives of the Nineteenth-Century Near East by
This book sets the writings of Merimee, Le Fanu, Stoker and Verne in the context in which they were written - namely the response to Balkan, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian politics. Gibson analyzes their works to reveal that the vampire acts as an allegory of the Near East through which constitutes a challenge to the 'orientalism' argument of today.
Bram Stoker's Dracula: A Reader's Guide by
Dracula (1897) is one of the most commonly studied gothic novels and has been hugely influential through adaptations in fiction, on stage and in cinema. Offering an authoritative, up-to-date guide for students, this book introduces its context, language, themes, criticism and afterlife, leading students to a more sophisticated understanding of the text. It is the ideal guide to reading and studying the novel, setting Dracula in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception. It also includes an introduction to its substantial history as an adapted text on stage and screen, focusing on the portrayal of the vampire from Nosferatu to "Interview with a Vampire." It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.