Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897)

From Commonplace Book
Revision as of 15:08, 8 February 2017 by Admin (talk | contribs) (General Notes)
Jump to: navigation, search

General Notes

  • it's hard to tell at a glance but it appears that in the late c19 Romania was an independent kingdom but Transylvania as a region was part of Austria-Hungary until WWI - cf Wiki Lands of the Crown of St Stephen
  • also worth thinking about this narrative in terms of the more outward-looking foreign policy of the 80s and 90s (cf. Kucich's intro to Victorian novel handbook)
  • 11 he's pretty anxious from the get go
  • 21 tension btwn novel form and narrative form ("ch 2" / "JH's journal (cont.)")
  • 22, 24 descriptions of the count's appearance

59 younger

  • 26 dracula's English library
  • 30 per penguin note, Harker's Kodak camera puts the narration at least in 1888
  • 32-3 no reflection and the incident with H's razor
  • 41 Dracula climbing the wall
  • 43 Hamlet -- not even a complete ref to Shakespeare, familiarity is assumed (and fits with journal form too)
  • 44-6 the count's 3 women
  • 52 count dresses as harker
  • 53 embodied dust motes/hypnotism
  • 57 allusion to Pope's translation of Homer
  • 61 "Mina is a woman, and there is nought in common." Isn't there?
  • 62 Mina as New Woman (or influenced by them as she states herself)
  • 66 Desdemona - Shakespeare's Othello
  • 68 seward's diary kept on phonograph - novel gesturing toward multimedia

Theme Tracking

Narrated reading/writing

As opposed to narrational writing, which is the whole framing form

Materiality

Technology

Information, communication, else

States of consciousness

Nation/Empire

History

Shakespeare References

  • 43 Hamlet's tablets
  • 66 desdemona