Cywilizacja przeciw chaosowi. „Dracula” Brama Stokera jako powieść gotycka o nowoczesności

Abstrakt

In Dracula, a novel by Bram Stoker, a civilized gentleman from the Victorian Period is filled with horror at Nature, which in macrocosm appears as chaos of the elements and in microcosm manifests itself in the irrationality of drives controlling human beings. On such an interpretation, Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania is a special voyage to the Conradian “heart of darkness” − the boundary of knowledge of cartographers drawing maps of the globe and the human psyche. Stoker, however, believes in civilisation, in the power of technology over the horror of elements, in the power of morality over wild drives of human nature. This faith is expressed by what may seem to be a banal form of a Gothic novel, which is the genre of the most famous literary work about a vampire, where the entire plot centres around the triumph of the Light Team over Dracula.