Bram Stoker's Place In Dracula

Introduction

Literature has proved to be throughout time a powerful tool for creating enduring myths, legendary characters and fictional stories, making thus the truth irrelevant as long as the narrative was gripping. Such aspects, together with the context and period into which a novel was written brought to life stories that have become immortal and are going to last for eternity. This seems to be the case of the 19th century author Bram Stoker, who, upon fact, legend and fiction brought to life his eponymous vampire: Count Dracula, a sinister and monstrous predator who thrived on the blood of living souls. Regarded by many as the defining work of Gothic fiction, Stoker’s fin-de-sìecle novel achieved a pervasive hold on Western

For this reason, my essay will focus on the importance of place in Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel Dracula, showing how the fixation with the vampire myth allows to proliferate a barbaric and misconceived image of “the land of Dracula”. My idea is to contemplate the space and landscape described throughout the novel so as to see how “there is something behind or within the narrative of Dracula” (Schleifer, 1980: 301) with regard to Transylvania, that it is neither sinister nor shadowy, just

My idea is not so much to carry out a comparison between the two places, but to look at them as different landscapes, with separate traditions and customs. The fundamental idea is that Romanian’s distinctiveness was the essential component for the development of the Gothic atmosphere in Dracula, and “the midst of the Carpathian mountains [gave birth to] one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe” (Stoker, 1993: 2). Yet, in reality the country’s culture and customs simply existed off the beaten path that the westeners