Essay from 1st year of University for the Cultural Contexts Module. (I'm a Film & TV Student).
This essay talks about Stoker's Dracula as an example of modernist art as well as challenging this concept and describes it as a cultural artefact that in at least one aspect helped shape modern artist...
Cultural Artifact: Dracula
Many artifacts of the modern society and culture are and were innovated and designed with
reference to olde history; mythology and folklore. Dracula is perhaps the most prominent
evidence of how folklore and mythology have influenced our modern culture.
Bram Stoker published the original tale of the
world-famous vampire in the late 19th century; 1897.
Prior to writing the legendary story, Stoker was
inspired by the horror-inspiring story and belief of the
“nosferatu” in which every Romanian peasant at the
time was said to believe equally as they believed in the
existence of heaven and hell. Here we can see the
influence of folklore and its presence through history
even during revolutionary changes in society such as
the newly found movement of modernism at the time
of the novel's release.
Modernism arose towards the end of the 19th century
and with the beginning of the 21st. Dracula, as a literary
piece, falls perfectly
in line with what
modernism is
deemed to be, having been released in 1897 and as it is set
predominantly in Transylvania. Had we as readers
experienced an important, and rather more lengthy
transition to the urban setting of London, the book would
no longer be considered a piece of modernist art, but of
course this is not at all the case since it is set primarily in
the Carpathians. Yet still, perhaps it was a bit too modern
even for the modernist revolution activists. The book as we
know it now has 418 pages but Stokers original manuscript
had 529. The first 101 pages were discovered decades after
the legendary classic was released. Jonathan Harker's train
journey has never been the real beginning of the novel.
But late 19th century society managed to fool us into thinking that Jonathan is the one who
introduces this story. All this was at the cause of the modernist, gothic-fiction writer claiming
that Dracula was in fact based in reality.
As a cultural artifact, these (now only) 419 pages tell us how even in a society which strives to
move forward and step away from the norm, innovation, and apparently truth must be
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, Eliška Belejová | 2203131
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hidden - that is of course if Stokers claims of Dracula actually being grounded in reality are
true. Stoker’s iconic work has been translated into many languages, which the author used as
a way to give us the information his English publisher never wanted anyone to see. “Makt
Myrkanna” the book claiming to be the Icelandic translation of Dracula’s story includes the
never-before-seen, following passage;
“I am quite convinced that there is no doubt whatever that the events here described really took
place, however unbelievable and incomprehensible they might appear at first sight. And I am
further convinced that they must always remain to some extent incomprehensible.”
Dracula as a book illustrates the ever-existing struggles of an artist who seeks to enrich his
peers, whether that be of fact,
truth, fiction. Stoker’s U.K.
publisher did in fact return his
original manuscript with the
word “No.” but Stoker fought
his way to let his truth come
out into the world for those
who would become engrossed
in this gothic classic, and the
way he chose to go around it
was through other cultures,
other languages if you will,
trusting foreign translators to
publish pieces of the book that
the original publisher refused
to show the readers. There is a
high chance that if you read
Dracula in two different
translations, one will contain
something the other doesn’t.
It can however also be
challenged that this piece of
written art that we now,
ironically call a “classic” is an example of modernism, seeing as it is an Epistolary novel. You
might be surprised to learn that Epistolary novels (or simply novels written through the
perspective of a series of letters, such as Dracula and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (1818)) have
been around since the 17th century. A mere two centuries before Stoker had begun to work on
the Nosferatu adaptation. Yet those who argue this case lack further evidence to show
Dracula as a non-modernist novel). Dracula is known for depicting peoples unspoken traits,
fantasies and fetishes just to name a few ideas which is why it could be said that Dracula is a
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