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This volume provides a critical reappraisal of Stoker's Dracula by examining various adaptations of the book, as well as different literary, cinematic, theatrical, cultural, artistic and creative reworkings of the Gothic.

“Post/modern Dracula” explores the postmodern in Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel and the Victorian in Francis Ford Coppola’s postmodern film to demonstrate how the century that separates the two artists binds them more than it divides them. What are the postmodern elements of Stoker’s novel? Where are the Victorian traits in Coppola’s film? Is there a postmodern gloss on those Victorian traits? And can there be a Victorian directive behind postmodernism in general? The nine essays compiled in t.

This study examines Stoker’s contribution to the modern notion of Gothic and demonstrates that Gothic excess is Stoker’s way of focusing on social, economic, and political problems. What makes this study unique is that it privileges Stoker’s development of modern Gothic in Dracula but also addresses Stoker’s works that are decidedly not Gothic. The creator of Dracula wrote for the Irish Civil Service as well as created The Man and Lady Athlyne, two romances. Understanding the Stoker, who was fascinated with technology and racial and gender development as well as Gothic mystery, helps readers understand fin de siècle tensions.

Dracula (1897) is one of the most commonly studied gothic novels and has been hugely influential through adaptations in fiction, on stage and in cinema. Offering an authoritative, up-to-date guide for students, this book introduces its context, language, themes, criticism and afterlife, leading students to a more sophisticated understanding of the text. It is the ideal guide to reading and studying the novel, setting Dracula in its historical, intellectual and cultural contexts, offering analyses of its themes, style and structure, providing exemplary close readings, presenting an up-to-date account of its critical reception. It also includes an introduction to its substantial history as an adapted text on stage and screen, focusing on the portrayal of the vampire from Nosferatu to Interview with a Vampire. It includes points for discussion, suggestions for further study and an annotated guide to relevant reading.

British Victorians were obsessed with fluids-with their scarcity and with their omnipresence. By the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of citizens regularly petitioned the government to provide running water and adequate sewerage, while scientists and journalists fretted over the circulation of bodily fluids. InThe Social Life of Fluids, Jules Law traces the fantasies of power and anxieties of identity precipitated by these developments as they found their way into the plotting and rhetoric of the Victorian novel. Analyzing the expression of scientific understanding and the technological manipulation of fluids-blood, breast milk, and water-in six Victorian novels (by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Moore, and Bram Stoker), Law traces the growing anxiety about fluids in Victorian culture from the beginning of the sanitarian movement in the 1830s through the 1890s. Fluids, he finds, came to be regarded as the most alienable aspect of an otherwise inalienable human body, and, paradoxically, as the least rational element of an increasingly rationalized environment. Drawing on literary and feminist theory, social history, and the history of science and medicine, Law shows how fluids came to be represented as prosthetic extensions of identity, exposing them to contested claims of kinship and community and linking them inextricably to public spaces and public debates.

Hardy mentions this in one sentence in Life and Work, in a paragraph evoking various curiosities of 'the London of Dickens and Thackeray'; and the record of his various measurements (including his apparently large animal faculty of 'destructiveness', but equally large one of 'constructiveness') was still among his papers at his death.1 It is not so well known that, some thirty years later, Hardy was again the subject of a phrenological analysis, albeit one based on his published photograph rather than his actual head. Hardy's 'wide, long, well-raised nose' also indicates 'love of deduction, and thoughtfulness', and his eye 'power of language, and the ability to express the ideas conceived, in words'.2 The aim of Stocker's article, which is similarly gushing towards all its subjects, seems to have been to elevate the profile of 'phrenophysiognomy' as an intellectually respectable discourse ('suffice it to say that a science of \"bumps\" Phrenology is not'3) rather than challenge what he took to be established literary reputations. Caine stands out from this multitude, however, because although not known through his novels he can still command attention for various significant events and circumstances relating to them, such as the unprecedented volume of their sales; his notable successes in adapting them for stage and film; his relentless self-publicising and celebrity profile in the press; and his significant associations with other writers of the period (for example Caine lives on through being the dedicatee of Bram Stoker's Dracula).6 It was indirectly due to Caine's popularity that in 1895 Jude the Obscure, unlike all Hardy's previous novels, first appeared in book form in a single volume rather than the traditional three volumes destined for the circulating libraries. Joseph Conrad notoriously (to those who study Caine) even described Caine as 'a kind of male Marie Corelli', asserting that '[n]either of these writers belongs to literature'.9 The collocation of the two authors' names, conveniently alliterative, can be seen as a nervous response by other novelists and critics to the changes in the fiction market that Caine and Corelli were caught up in (and certainly benefited from in the short term).

This article considers the main characters of E. M. Carroll's queer gothic horror comic When I Arrived at the Castle, The Cat and The Countess. I argue that Carroll melds literary and folkloric representations of monsters in creating their characters, understanding that readers will (and counting on them to) bring communal and cultural perceptions to the narrative. Using a monster studies lens paired with comic studies’ close attention to visual rhetoric, I analyze how Carroll calls upon familiar vampire, lamia, cat, and chimera motifs. In alignment with Michael Dylan Foster and Jeffrey A. Tolbert's formulation of the folkloresque, Carroll's deliberate blending of folkloric creatures speaks to broader conversations about comics and popular culture.

Objectives: The purpose of this research is the comparative analysis of two Vlad Dracula from semiotic approach. First, the Vlad the Impaler who was a historical character and second, Count Dracula who created in a possible world and have a mythological character.   Value/Originality: The author tries to find out which features from historical Vlad interfered for creation the myth of Vlad by comparing these two characters. Also, what are the similarities of these two by comparative semiotic analysis.   Method: this research focuses on the qualitative method based on the comparative analysis for historical Dracula and Mythical Dracula.   Theoretical Framework: this article investigates on the semiotic approach based on the comparison analysis of two Dracula.   Result and Discussion: There are of course some similarities between the two Dracula and those similarities can be summarized in their name, physical appearance, accent, attachment to their homes, interested in blood. 

Age and Gender in Magical School Stories,” Michelle Anya Anjirbag analyzes depictions of older women, particularly educators, in three series featuring a magical education: J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch series. Anjirbag shows how dominant power systems continue to shape women’s opportunities and representation, despite the rise of the “girl-boss” or other gestures toward gender parity, within or outside of books. Maria Truglio’s “As Close as from Here to There: The Ethics of Haunting in Geda and Akbari’s Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli” provides a close reading of a popular Italian children’s book and how it reflects the significant influx of immigrants to Italy in the past three decades.