Horror Literature

Lesson 5: Vampires

The Count

Bram Stoker's Dracula, written in 1897, has become a veritable cult figure in society today. The repercussions of Stoker's novel has doubtlessly far exceeded any of the author's expectations. According to Elizabeth Miller (1996), Stoker did not know much about the real Dracula, who was also known as Vlad the Impaler. The author came upon the name in a book on Wallachia that he was researching. An inaccurate footnote stated that "Dracula" meant "Devil". And Stoker had a name for his Count.

In actual fact Dracula means "little Dragon". It was a family name that the Count took from his father, Dracul. Vlad the Impaler was also not a Count, but a prince. He was given the nickname Impaler for his tendency to impale those who angered him on large wooden stakes.

Optional Project
Read Chapter VII, entitled "Dracula" in Clemens. Do you think that Stoker should have conducted more research before writing his novel? Should he have been more true to the real account of the real Dracula?

Where the myth of the vampire comes from is difficult to say and shrouded in the mists of time. However, most scholars place the birth of the vampire as we know it today somewhere in the eleventh century. The vampire existed in Slavic countries, mainly in folklore. The first vampire in literature is found in a story by John Polidori, called "The Vampyre". The story was however not very good and it remained in obscurity. The first really popular novel of vampire lore was Stoker's work.

Various works of fiction containing vampires were spawned as a result of Stoker's work. In fact the author himself wrote a collection of short stories, "Dracula's Guest" (1914), as a continuation of his Dracula theme. Since then there have been countless collections of fiction and full length novels dealing with the Count. The Dracula theme was revived during the 1990's with Francis Ford Coppola's film starring Winona Ryder as the unfortunate Mina. Fred Saberhagen, a collaborator on the script for the movie, also wrote a novel featuring Dracula, called The Dracula Tape. This work features Dracula as a first-person narrator defending his actions.

Several accounts of the "real story" have also been inspired by the original Dracula. One of these is I am Dracula, Know Me, by C. Dean Andersson. This story features a mixture of the historical Dracula with folklore and Stoker's story. Another novel, coming in three parts, is called Dracula Lives! by Peter Tremayne. The three parts are set in different epochs and the Count's actions during these times. The first two stories sketch the main character as the evil spawn of hell, as he is also viewed in Stoker's novel. However, the final part deals with Dracula as a misunderstood and unhappy creature, who, fully aware of his own shortcomings, manages to win the heart of a woman. Both the above make an attempt at greater historical accuracy than Stoker. In fact, Tremayne goes even further back than the history of the Impaler to Egyptian lore and the cult of the dragon.

It is evident therefore that this figure will never lose his appeal. There is just something about an elegant gentleman with jet-black hair and sharp, white teeth … isn't there?

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