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VAMPIRE VERSUS THE EMPIRE: BRAM STOKER'S REPROACH OF FIN-DE-SIÈCLE BRITAIN IN DRACULA
Victorian Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2018-05-16 , DOI: 10.1017/s1060150317000481 Ertuğrul Koç , Yağmur Demir
Much has been said about Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), the out-of-tradition exemplar of the Gothic which, perhaps, has had a more pervasive effect on our understanding of life and death, gender roles and identity, and sex and perversity than any other work of the genre. The vampire from the so-called dark ages has become a symbol standing for the uncontrollable powers acting on us and also for all the discarded, uncanny phenomena in human nature and history. The work, however, has usually been taken by the critics of Gothic literature as “a paradigmatic Gothic text” (Brewster 488) representing the social, psychological, and sexual traumas of the late-nineteenth century. Hence, it has been analysed as a work “breaking [the] taboos, [and in need of being] read as an expression of specifically late Victorian concerns” (Punter and Byron 231). The text has also been seen as “reinforc[ing] readers’ suspicions that the authorities (including people, institutions and disciplines) they trust are ineffectual” (Senf 76). Yet, it has hardly ever been taken as offering an alternative Weltanschauung in place of the decaying Victorian ethos. True, Dracula is a fin-de-siècle novel and deals with the turbulent paradigmatic shift from the Victorian to the modern, and Stoker, by creating the lecherous vampire and his band as the doppelgängers of the sexually sterile and morally pretentious bourgeois types (who are, in fact, inclined to lascivious joys), reveals the moral hypocrisy and sexual duplicity of his time. But, it is also true that by juxtaposing the “abnormal” against the “normal” he targets the utilitarian bourgeois ethics of the empire: aware of the Victorian pragmatism on which the concept of the “normal” has been erected, he, with an “abnormal” historical figure (Vlad Drăculea of the House of Drăculești, 1431–76) who appears as Count Dracula in the work, attacks the ethical superstructure of Britain which has already imposed on the Victorians the “pathology of normalcy” (Fromm 356). Hence, Stoker's choice of title character, the sadistic Vlad the Impaler, who fought against the Ottoman Empire in the closing years of the Middle Ages, and his anachronistic rendering of Dracula as a Gothic invader of the Early Middle Ages are not coincidental (Figure 8). In the world of the novel, this embodiment of the early and late paradigms is the antagonistic power arrayed against the supposedly stable, but in reality fluctuating, fin-de-siècle ethos. However, by turning this personification of the “evil” past into a sexual enigma for the band of men who are trying to preserve the Victorian patriarchal hegemony, Stoker suggests that if Victorian sterile faith in the “normal” is defeated through a historically extrinsic (in fact, currently intrinsic) anomaly, a more comprehensive social and ethical epoch that has made peace with the past can be started.
中文翻译:
吸血鬼与帝国:布拉姆斯托克在德古拉对 FIN-DE-SIÈCLE BRITAIN 的指责
已经说了很多 布拉姆·斯托克德古拉 (1897 年),哥特式的反传统典范,它可能比任何其他类型的作品对我们对生与死、性别角色和身份、性与反常的理解产生了更普遍的影响。来自所谓黑暗时代的吸血鬼,已经成为一种象征,代表着无法控制的力量作用在我们身上,也代表着人性和历史中所有被抛弃的、不可思议的现象。然而,这部作品通常被哥特式文学的批评者视为“典型的哥特式文本”(布鲁斯特 488),代表了 19 世纪后期的社会、心理和性创伤。因此,它被分析为一部“打破 [the] 禁忌,[并且需要被] 阅读为维多利亚时代晚期特别关注的表达”(Punter 和 Byron 231)的作品。该文本还被视为“加强了读者的怀疑,即他们信任的权威(包括个人、机构和学科)是无效的”(Senf 76)。然而,它几乎从未被视为提供替代方案世界观 代替腐朽的维多利亚时代精神。真的,德古拉 是一个世纪末 小说并处理从维多利亚时代到现代的动荡范式转变,以及斯托克,通过创造好色的吸血鬼和他的乐队作为分身 性不育和道德上自命不凡的资产阶级类型(事实上,他们倾向于淫荡的快乐),揭示了他那个时代的道德虚伪和性方面的两面性。但是,通过将“异常”与“正常”并列,他瞄准了帝国的功利主义资产阶级伦理,这也是事实:意识到建立“正常”概念的维多利亚时代的实用主义,他以“不正常”的历史人物(Drăculesti 家族的 Vlad Drăculea,1431-76 年)在作品中以德古拉伯爵的身份出现,攻击英国的道德上层建筑,这种上层建筑已经强加给维多利亚时代的“常态病态”(弗洛姆 356) . 因此,斯托克选择了在中世纪末期与奥斯曼帝国作战的虐待狂弗拉德穿刺者,他将德古拉描绘成中世纪早期的哥特式入侵者并非偶然(图 8)。在小说的世界里,这种早期和晚期范式的体现,是与本应稳定,但实际上波动的对立力量,世纪末 精神。然而,通过将这种“邪恶”过去的拟人化转变为试图维护维多利亚时代父权制霸权的男性群体的性谜,斯托克建议,如果维多利亚时代对“正常”的贫瘠信仰被历史外在的(事实上,目前内在的)异常,可以开始一个与过去和平相处的更全面的社会和伦理时代。
更新日期:2018-05-16
Victorian Literature and Culture Pub Date : 2018-05-16 , DOI: 10.1017/s1060150317000481 Ertuğrul Koç , Yağmur Demir
中文翻译:
吸血鬼与帝国:布拉姆斯托克在德古拉对 FIN-DE-SIÈCLE BRITAIN 的指责