The Creative Identity

Dracula : Bibliographical Resources – Part I

If you're an undergraduate, stepping into the land of Dracula will seem daunting, and with good reason. While now you may be worrying that 2,500 words are very many, soon you will realise that you're zooming through paragraphs and that it is difficult to say something even remotely original about a text that has been talked about in all of its incarnations for decades. If you're a postgraduate, especially the PhD sort, you'll be able to investigate this novel in great depth, but certain observations (the bird's eye view sort) are best kept at the beginning of a thesis, where you set the scene for your argument. The purpose of this post is to provide you with specific reference materials that will support you whether you're writing a mere essay, a dissertation or a thesis. I am working on a comprehensive bibliography for vampire literature researchers, so if you have any questions, don't hesitate to drop me a line and I'll do what I can to help you. * There are numerous editions of Dracula out there and only recently I spotted another two hardbacks in my local bookshop. Some are illustrated, comic book-like, others are merely more elegant versions with decorated covers. But if you're working on this novel, and not merely reading it, I find that only two are really necessary. Dracula Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Maurice Hindle and Preface by Christopher Frayling, Penguin revised edition 2003, this one. This includes a preface, chronology, introduction,... Read more →

Bram Stoker's Dracula – Part III

Bram Stoker Part I is right here and II is here Vampiric sex becomes an irresistible and absolute contamination or indeed the expression of a universal disorder where it is not merely the confines of common moral sexuality that are obliterated but even the sacred separation between life and death in a sort of supernatural, cosmic violation that defies the very laws of nature. However, to define the sexuality of the vampire is to produce more vampirism, or indeed to stabilise the idea of perversity, as Judith Halberstam observes in ‘Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula’. 'This would overlook Gothic novels’ ability to create monsters that are never unitary but an aggregation of different elements, in Dracula’s case, ‘monster and man, feminine and powerful, parasitical and wealthy; he is repulsive and fascinating, he exerts the consummate gaze but is scrutinized in all things, he lives forever but can be killed. Dracula is indeed not simply a monster but a technology of monstrosity’ (1995: 88). Yet, if the erotic theme mixed with a fear of the foreign and the unknown was already present in classical literature and legends and was then utilised again by the first authors who turned the vampire into a charming, if terrifying, creature, Stoker’s novel adds an original trait to the issue in light of Victorian positivism, which had been so deeply affected by the mere existence of Dracula within itself. Although the author accepts the supernatural nature of the monster, he seeks at the same time... Read more →

Intermission

This morning I realised with one heck of a start that lots of events I remember clearly as if they happened yesterday have, in fact, taken place nineteen years ago. I don't know what shocks me more about this: whether the ability to recall facts that had no direct repercussions on my life or the mere length of time that has elapsed since then and that makes me feel like I've been around for ages and ages. What will seventy feel like, I wonder? Do you remember the LA race riots of 1992? Obviously, I do. What I also remember is Billy Idol's cyberpunk tribute to them, Shock To The System, which was released the year after. I understand you may sit there and snigger at the mere thought that the peroxide guy may have felt invested in anything other than sex and drugs but, believe me reader, the Cyberpunk album is terribly, unfairly underrated. I just can't believe the guy is already fifty-five. It seems only yesterday that he was younger than I am now. Enjoy while I slowly shake my head in disbelief. By the way! I actually saw him LIVE that year. Read more →

Bram Stoker's Dracula – Part II

Part I is right here The threat is not so much focused on inversion, as on total unity and on the possibility that the male may be ‘unsexed’ and penetrated on two levels, the physical one and the figurative one. The latter sees the emasculation of the good, brave men at the hand of the usurper from the foreign land. This is precisely what lies at the core of the book: Dracula’s abilities in the land of the living are so all-encompassing and authoritative because they are profoundly related to the most basic laws that govern human interactions. In other words, what makes him so potent is the same quality that weakens all other men: his sexual aura. As Judith Weissman noted in ‘Dracula as a Victorian novel’: The difference between the sexuality of Dracula and the women vampires is […] the key to the psychological meaning of the book. For him, sex is power; for them it is desire. He is the man whom all other men fear, the man who can, without loss of freedom or power himself, seduce other men’s women and make them sexually insatiable with a sexual performance that the others cannot match. (Carter, 1988: 76) The desire of the females, be these the three vampires who attempt the seduction of Jonathan, or Lucy, who fends off three suitors only to be gang-raped by all of them with an impressive phallic instrument (Showalter, 1989: 181) is juxtaposed to power and command. This is proven by... Read more →

Stephanella Meets Alain de Botton

I started studying philosophy at sixteen, as it was part of the syllabus at the point in time when we were deemed a little more mature and able to take it in. I didn't find it easy at all. It was the only humanities subject that confounded me. A few months in, I asked our teacher why we study 'the work of all of these people who evidently had no jobs and who said everything and its opposite'. The class sniggered at the remark (some laughed, understandably), while the teacher seemed somewhat offended by my morosity (also, understandably). She said that we study philosophy in order better to understand the evolution of humans as thinking beings. Simple, dear reader, and to this day my favourite, straight-to-the-point definition of the purpose of a discipline that is neither straight-forward, nor plain, nor simple. And yet, I find it vital to gain a profound understanding of who we are as a species. Many years later, as I was sitting in a café, talking about books with an acquaintance of mine, she burst out with, 'I just don't see the point of Alain de Botton'. Now it was my turn to feel a little hurt and offended because Alain de Botton is one of my favourite authors, up there with children's genius Jacqueline Wilson, and because, had I known he was around when I started wading through philosophy, my student life wouldn't have been half as hard. Herein lies Alain's greatness: he is able... Read more →