ABSTRACT

Much of the scholarship on Dracula (1897) has analysed it as a symptom of various anxieties at the core of late Victorian scientific and technological modernity. In this approach, Stoker’s liberalism in the novel has been read as part of the fragile rational world seeking to suppress the desires and fears of the erotic and other affective forces. This paper takes a different approach. In this paper, I examine the novel through the lens of a strand of modernity that developed around the concept of ‘Life’. ‘Life’ was conceived as an internal generative power of emergence and became a key metaphor for late Victorian progressive liberals, for whom it signified progress as continuously emerging potential, always free from pre-determination. I examine the modernity of ‘Life’ in Part I of the paper and take up its relevance to nineteenth-century liberalism. In Part II, I use modernity’s discourse of ‘Life’ as a frame for my analysis of Dracula’s liberalism.

摘要

大部分关于德古拉的奖学金(1897) 将其分析为维多利亚晚期科学和技术现代性核心的各种焦虑的症状。在这种方法中，斯托克小说中的自由主义被解读为脆弱的理性世界的一部分，试图压制色情和其他情感力量的欲望和恐惧。本文采用了不同的方法。在本文中，我通过围绕“生活”概念发展起来的一系列现代性的镜头来审视这部小说。“生命”被认为是涌现的内在生成力量，并成为维多利亚晚期进步自由主义者的一个关键隐喻，对他们来说，它意味着进步是不断涌现的潜力，总是不受预先决定的影响。我在论文的第一部分研究了“生活”的现代性，并探讨了它与 19 世纪自由主义的相关性。在第二部分，德古拉的自由主义。