I tend to disagree with the later assessments about Stoker's Dracula, that is a clumsy and non-intelligent novel.
It feels to me, with all its use of the most contemporary technology then, almost a modern novel -- I'd kind of like to compare it with what Scott F. Fitzgerald did with This Side of Paradise, also so filled with the modern, though in his case it was contemporary thought and popular culture, which previously you had not found in fiction, generally (though it seems that Austen's Sense and Sensibility in particular could be perceived as a foreshadowing of such novelistic devices in the future).
Stoker's Dracula was really new -- a novel -- in many ways! that we don't even notice now.
Though just lately the Steampunkers have claimed Dracula as one of their own, and it makes a great deal of sense, it seems to me.
OOOh, but here's this, also from Britain, about contemporary Whitby, compared with the Whitby of Dracula's landing!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/oct/29/whitby-britains-spookiest-town
Love, C.
I tend to disagree with the later assessments about Stoker's Dracula, that is a clumsy and non-intelligent novel.
ReplyDeleteIt feels to me, with all its use of the most contemporary technology then, almost a modern novel -- I'd kind of like to compare it with what Scott F. Fitzgerald did with This Side of Paradise, also so filled with the modern, though in his case it was contemporary thought and popular culture, which previously you had not found in fiction, generally (though it seems that Austen's Sense and Sensibility in particular could be perceived as a foreshadowing of such novelistic devices in the future).
Stoker's Dracula was really new -- a novel -- in many ways! that we don't even notice now.
Though just lately the Steampunkers have claimed Dracula as one of their own, and it makes a great deal of sense, it seems to me.
Love, C.