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Count Dracula, the imaginative creation of a nineteenth-century Irishman, has long since penetrated cultural archives outside the UK and Ireland and became, for all intents and purposes, a global phenomenon. The United States is not only no exception, but in fact one of the most diligent suppliers for the global brand Dracula. This comes as no surprise, considering that America has been encoded into Bram Stocker’s text from the start: if the figure of Count Dracula, a Transylvanian lord, is drenched in exoticism of marked foreignness and difference, so is the figure of the Texan Quincy Morris. Apart from feeding the general vampire hype in the US popular culture, in recent decades Bram Stocker’s Dracula underwent a number of narrative revisions and reinterpretations in American popular fiction. In this class, we will focus on these explicit reinterpretations, tracing the cultural energies and significance of Dracula’s transatlantic connections.
Please note that all three novels on our reading list are of considerable length. Therefore, please make sure to start reading well in advance of the class.
Primary Texts
Bram Stoker, Dracula: A Norton Critical Edition, edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, 1997. ISBN 978-0393970128
Fred Saberhagen, The Dracula Tape. Any edition you can find, including Kindle edition
Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian. Back Bay Books, 2006. ISBN 978-0316057882 |
