Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals
Author | : David Glover |
Publisher | : Duke University Press |
Total Pages | : 238 |
Release | : 1996 |
ISBN-10 | : 0822317982 |
ISBN-13 | : 9780822317982 |
Rating | : 4/5 (982 Downloads) |
Download or read book Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals written by David Glover and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glover's efforts reveal a writer who was more wide-ranging and politically engaged than his current reputation suggests. An Irish Protestant and nationalist, Stoker nonetheless drew his political inspiration from English liberalism at a time of impending crisis, and the tradition's contradictions and uncertainties haunt his work. At the heart of Stoker's writing Glover exposes a preoccupation with those sciences and pseudosciences - from physiognomy and phrenology to eugenics and sexology - that seemed to cast doubt on the liberal faith in progress. He argues that Dracula should be read as a text torn between the stances of the colonizer and colonized, unable to accept or reject the racialized images of backwardness that dogged debates about Irish nationhood.