Too Retro for Religion: Self-Identity and the Presence of God in the works of L. J. Smith and Bram Stoker (2025)

Vampire in Literature: Piety and Sacrilege

This dissertation explores the ways in which vampire literature both upholds and challenges the orthodox values of the Western Christian world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The novels that are the focus of the dissertation are Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and the first three novels in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, Interview with the Vampire (1976), The Vampire Lestat (1985) and The Queen of the Damned (1988). The dissertation has five chapters: the Introduction, which focuses mostly on the general context of the novels. Chapter Two explores Dracula, analysing the themes of Good vs Evil, Biblical resonance, and women in the context of nineteenth-century England. Chapter Three is focused on Interview with the Vampire, explaining the evolution of the image of the vampire in the twentieth century, and exploring the themes of the existence of God, the meaning of Evil, and vampire consciousness. Chapter Four is comprised of The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned, which are different novels, but the plot is continued from the former to the latter. For this reason, the themes of the new Gods, Christian inversions and gender roles are analysed using both novels simultaneously. The Conclusion to the dissertation is a brief summary of the main ideas that are explained throughout this thesis. The final conclusion to the research topic is that Dracula upholds the orthodox values of the Western Christian world of the nineteenth century, emphasising the concepts of Good and Evil as they are portrayed in the Bible, and showing the ongoing battle between God and Satan. The latter dichotomy is one of the core ideas of orthodox Christianity. It also highlights the perverted nature of the vampire, and the proper role of women in society. The Vampire Chronicles, on the other hand, challenge the orthodox values of the Western Christian world of the twentieth century, denying the existence of God, the evil nature of the vampire – who is elevated to a God himself –, and arguing that androgyny is a form of higher consciousness.

The Portrayal of the Male Vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976) : a Comparative Study.

Master's Degree dissertation, 2019

The main purpose of this thesis is to study the revision of the male vampire figure in Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker and Interview with the Vampire (1976) by Anne Rice. The first chapter is mainly concerned with the socio-historical contexts and literary backgrounds of Stoker’s and Rice’s novels. The second chapter is concerned with the analysis of the male vampires in both works. It shows that the male vampires in Dracula and Interview with the Vampire embody the concepts of the Id and the Superego in light of Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconcscious as developed in his The Ego and the Id (1923). In addition, this chapter shows how the religiosity of the Victorian Age and the secularity of the Postmodern era play a determining role in the representation of the male vampires. Also, Freud’s theory of the ‘‘Uncanny’’ is used to scrutinize the appearance of the vampire in the Victorian era. This dissertation also aims at demonstrating that Anne Rice, as a postmodern author, revises and redefines the image of the vampire from a Victorian destructive figure to a more humane constructive creature. To reach this aim, this thesis relies on Julie Sanders’ theory of ‘‘Appropriation’’ as developed in her Adaptation and Appropriation (2006). Key words: Stoker, Rice, vampire, Victorianism, Postmodernism, Appropriation, evil, morality.

Misbegotten, Unbegotten, Forgotten: Vampires and Monsters in the Works of Ugo Tarchetti, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and the Gothic Tradition, Forum Italicum 29, 1995

Stoker ’ s Dracula : Fears and Anxieties in the Victorian Society

2016

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a Gothic novel written in the time of Victorian England. England was an imperial force then and almost one-quarter of the earth’s land was part of the British Empire. The Victorian era is a transitional period saturated with old doctrines and a new lifestyle filled with technology. These created the predispositions for fears and anxieties among the Victorians. This paper discusses fears, anxieties, and attitudes of the Victorians towards the changes in their time as they were portrayed in Bram Stoker’s gothic novel. Specifically, this refers to the contrast between science and superstition, the fear of the Foreign, sexuality and homosexuality, and the rise of the New Woman. The contrast between science and superstition was represented by the clash between Eastern European folklore and the industrialization of Britain. Furthermore, England’s numerous colonies contributed to the contact with other nations which brought the fear of a possible reverse colonisati...

There was No Sign of Man in It": Casting Dracula as Posthuman and Valuing the Progressive Vampire

2017

Although not an immediate commercial success, Dracula has since become a seminal example of Gothic horror at the fin-de-siècle, leading not only to film, stage, and television adaptations, but also to literary reimaginings and a plethora of scholarship. I argue that the vampires in Dracula do not fit into the traditional critical understandings of the vampire; rather, they belong in two different but related categories recently theorized by science fiction studies and related to human evolution: transhuman and posthuman. I suggest that a reading of the novel that prioritizes the pervasive influence of evolutionary theory on Victorian literature encourages a reading of vampires as a posthuman species. Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) challenged and troubled the Victorians, who now had to consider humans as a species that not only evolved over time but that could also, like other species, go extinct. Humans in a state of transhuman evolution and vampires as posthuman call into question a common belief that Victorian fin-de-siècle literature echoes contemporary fears of regression post-Darwin. Instead, the vampires in this new reading highlight Victorian fears of the progression of another species that will naturally overtake homo sapiens. Having read the text as an expression of a fear of the vampire's evolution, I will then argue that rather than limiting the discussion of Stoker's novel to fin-de-siècle Gothic horror, we can also read Stoker's novel as a work of science fiction.

THE VISION OF RELIGION IN FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA’S BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA

Post/modern Dracula: From Victorian Themes to …, 2007

Coppola, though, seems to use the cinematographic medium as a way to convey meaning through images, always keeping the various sides balanced so that the film remains understandable, in one way or another, by all members of the audience. It is a commercial necessity, of course, one which corresponds to the spirit of our day. Maybe this spirit has been created by the commercial intentions of the medium (where the medium is the message), or the spirit of the day has emerged from history itself and has invested the medium with its essence (where the message is the medium). Does postmodernity emerge from the market economy in the field of ideas, ideologies, and cultural constructions, or does it come from the slow and steady evolution of the human species in its historical adventure? We cannot know for sure. We might even say that this market economy can be seen as part of this historical adventure in what some identify as a dialectical though not antagonistic relation. For sure, great filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola go along with the spirit of their time, trying to satisfy their own artistic needs in addition to the commercial needs of their audiences. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Coppola attempts to connect as many people in the audience as possible beyond their various divides—sexual, social, economic, cultural, artistic, religious, or whatever.

'Reading the Vampire: Science, Sexuality and Alterity in Modern Culture' MA

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

British Fantasy Society Journal , 2021

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.

"Let There Be Darkness: The Vampire as Agent of Theological Dialogue" by M. Jess Peacock

Despite the recent cultural shift of presenting vampires in a more secular light, the traditional vampire in popular culture has a long and rich history of serving as an overt theological figure in both literature and the cinema. Whether as a symbol of the seductiveness of sin as defined from an Augustinian perspective, or an apologetic for the technologies of religious salvation, or even serving as a portal of discussion of more contemporary religious and sociological interpretations such as liberationist theory, the vampire has served as a spiritual touchstone within popular culture, from Bram Stoker's Dracula to current entries such as the True Blood series and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.