Vampirism as a Shadow in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v3i12.622Keywords:
Communion, Dracula, Eating misrepresentation, Stoker.Abstract
Through the studies of literal and metaphorical meanings of eating in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), this article investigates how the depictions of food and eating culture in Transylvania are the results of misrepresentations. Contrast to the illustrations about the consumptions of food in the Western table which accompanies the spirit of unity, the predatory images of vampires in Transylvania can be easily associated with an idea that communion is absent in the foreign land. The purpose of this article is, thus, to subvert the binary oppositions between East and West, with the focus on the descriptions of food and eating. For this goal, the examinations in this article include: three female vampires’ language which involves the sense of communion, the Western characters’ eating at a table which turns out to be a defective place in achieving the spirit of unity, and a lunatic character R.M. Renfield’s abnormal eating habits that can be interpreted within the contemporary socioeconomic contexts. Ultimately, this article is to show how the vampiric images in Stoker’s Dracula function as shadows that cover the violence of the Western middle-class capitalists in the contemporary capital-oriented society.
References
Boone, T. (1993). "He is English and therefore adventurous": politics, decadence, and Dracula. Studies in the Novel, 25 (1), 76-91.
Hatlen, B. (1980). The return of the repressed/oppressed in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Minnesota Review, (15), 80-97.
Hindle, M. (2003). Notes, Dracula (pp.439-454). London: Penguin Books.
Kilgour, M. (1990). From communion to cannibalism: an anatomy of metaphors of incorporation. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Kirtley, B. (1956). "Dracula," the monastic chronicles and Slavic folklore. Midwest Folklore, 6 (3), 133-139.
LeBlanc, R. (1999). Food, orality, and nostalgia for childhood: gastronomic Slavophilism in midnineteenth-century Russian fiction. The Russian Review, 58 (2), 244-267.
LeBlanc, R. (2009). Slavic sins of the flesh: food, sex, and carnal appetite in nineteenth-century Russian fiction. Lebanon: University of New Hampshire Press.
Liebknecht, W. (1972). The spider and the fly (1889). Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1881/spider.htm.
Mckee, P. (2002). Racialization, capitalism, and aesthetics in Stoker's Dracula. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 36 (1), 42-60.
Moretti, F. (1988). Signs taken for wonders. London: Verso.
Stoker, B. (2003). Dracula. London: Penguin Books.
Williams, R. (1973). The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).