Medieval Hero and Postmedieval Vampire: Dracula and His Afterimages in History and Art

Event Description:

Medieval Studies hosts guest speaker Dr. Alice Sullivan of Tufts University who will speak on the historical and remembered Dracula. Dracula has been a mainstay of films, TV shows, plays, novels, and comic books for decades. The modern fascination with Dracula began in the 1920s and 30s with the appearance of plays and movies based on Bram Stoker's eponymous novel, first published in 1897. The events described in Stoker's Dracula take place in fin-de-siecle London and Transylvania, and the novel makes only loose historical references to its fifteenth-century namesake. Vlad III "the Impaler" (1481 - ca. 1476), prince of Wallachia. But its massive popularity had the effect of generating considerable curiosity about the prince himself, his brutal reign, and the historical context in which he lived. This lecture examines the transformations of the historical figure into a postmedieval vampire, and the ongoing fascination today with Dracula and his afterimages.