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In dialogue with the vampire: influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on twentieth and twenty-first century vampire tropes
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Date
2025-06-24
Authors
Roche, Mairéad
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Publisher
University College Cork
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on the dialogue between Stoker’s Dracula and subsequent twentieth and twenty-first century vampire narratives via their building blocks, tropes. Stoker’s Dracula is not the original vampire story. However, Dracula, since its publication in 1897, has become the effective source material and the lens through which so many of the twentieth and early twenty-first century’s concepts of how vampires are viewed when they appear on our pages and screens. As the canonical, recognisable vampire text, Stoker’s Dracula has set the standard for vampires in how they look, operate and how they can be fought. To create a vampire narrative after the publication of Dracula, therefore, is to be in dialogue with the text, either cleaving to its tropes or innovating them. By situating Stoker’s text within the origins and lineage of the vampire genre, this thesis explores how Stoker’s choice of tropes has established how we discuss and recognise vampires. The focus on tropes is within the framework of Roland Barthes consideration of codes and signifiers in how we ‘read’ a narrative to break down and identify recognisable, repeated elements between narratives.
Chapter One ‘Origin: Folklore’ establishes the vampire’s origin story found in Eastern European folklore, medical reports by imperial forces, and the subsequent spread of the vampire story through Western European media and scholarship. The vampire’s origin story establishes recognisable signs to identify a vampire which have developed into many of the tropes considered within this thesis. To understand the development of vampire folkloric tropes is key to understand vampire narrative tropes. Chapter Two ‘Origin: Critical Reception’ also explores the critical tradition surrounding vampires and how the vampire figure, once placed outside of serious scholarship, was from the 1970s onwards, invited into academia via the work of two historians and vampires gaining residency in Gothic Studies. We will also consider how the study of vampires has developed and expanded during the twenty-first century and the place the study of vampire tropes in dialogue with Stoker’s Dracula can occupy within this field of study. Chapter Three ‘Vampire Markers’ considers vampiric identity markers. Focus is centered on vampire capes, who wears them and what is being communicated to an audience once a vampire dons the cape. As the vampires being discussed are all blood drinking vampires, the mouth and teeth of these predatory characters is discussed via vampire dentistry. Vampires with fangs, be they permanent or retractable fangs or without fangs altogether, is examined as a traditional marker to identify a vampire.
For all their strengths, vampires have vulnerabilities and Chapter Four ‘Vampire Vulnerabilities’ discusses three such vulnerabilities via the tropes of skin, native soil and invitation. How these apparent vulnerabilities are used to create social commentary is brought to the fore in this chapter whilst demonstrating the dynamicism of innovation using tropes in vampire narratives. The agents of action in Chapter Five ‘Agents of Action’ are doctors and slayers. The trope of having medical doctors within vampire narratives has been a cornerstone of the genre. Doctors and/or scientists who are ignorant or knowledgeable about the medical threat of vampires, allow for an exploration of ethics within these stories. Who occupies the position of doctor and vampire slayer is shown in this chapter to be continuously evolving. The presence of the doctor and slayer is a reassuring one within the narratives. Identifying them is as crucial as that of identifying the vampires and has become a fertile ground for innovation. The choice of tropes is placed under scrutiny with an understanding of prospective future work in this area. This thesis concludes with a final consideration of the influence Stoker’s Dracula continues to have on the genre.
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Keywords
Vampire , Dracula , Stoker , Capes , Fangs , Skin , Soil , Invitation , Doctors , Slayers
Citation
Roche, M. 2025. In dialogue with the vampire: influence of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on twentieth and twenty-first century vampire tropes. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
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Copyright
© 2025, Mairéad Roche.