Dracula provides a window into fin-de-siècle research practices, collating various disciplines (haematology, virology, psychotherapy, neurology) into a genealogic Gesamtbild. Rather than seeing science and literature as separate cultures, moreover, Dracula as a case study reveals how techno-scientific and literary developments mutually challenge and mirror one another, so that we may use Stoker’s novel to deepen our understanding of contemporary science-related developments and vice versa. In other words, I read Dracula as a window into biomedical and bio-political challenges surfacing in the 1890s, but evolving into major research areas.

These developments not only herald a new style of scientific thinking, but also foreshadow a number of developments still relevant for contemporary culture. This paper analyses Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula as a literary document which reflects important scientific and technological developments of the fin-the-siècle era, ranging from blood transfusion and virology via psychotherapy and psychoanalysis up to brain research and communication technology. The main theoretical tools come from the studies of Carl Gustav Jung and Gilbert Durand and their ideas on the collective unsconscious and the two orders of the image, respectively. The analysis of the archetype of the vampire and the archetypal images presented in Dracula unfolds predominantly through the examination of the psychological and anthropological implications connected to blood imagery. Several elements in such a transformation can be identified in Stoker’s novel, and the eagerness with which the work was accepted by Victorian audiences is a symptom of the needs that resulted from the excessive repression from that period. A major consequence of such a transition is a drastic change in the British behavioral code. The work is published in a crucial historical moment, during which the British traditional rural values are replaced by modern and urban ones. The book identifies the predominant archetypes and images in Dracula, showing to what extent they represent relevant issues to Victorian society and the audiences the novel has had since then.

Purpose and Power by Donald Stoker