Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:31:00.330Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

DRACULA’S APOLOGETICS OF PROGRESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2016

Lucas Kwong
Lucas Kwong*
Affiliation:
New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Religion in Dracula studies has often looked a little like the Un-Dead Lucy, a ghastly simulacrum of living faith. Indeed, readings of the novel frequently depend on a suspicious approach to the novel's professions of piety, one that regards them as a mask for more fundamental concerns: the heroes profess religious concern, but what they really want is to neutralize the New Woman, or racial degeneration, or sexual perversion. Under these conditions, Christianity provides, at best, a potent discourse through which the characters can manage these coded crises. When religion does enter the conversation, critics tend to read the text for clues to Stoker's personal position on the theological controversies of his day: the Catholic-Protestant divide in Ireland, the place of High Church ritualism in Anglican worship, the merit of the doctrine of transubstantiation. As a result, we are left with a Dracula that functions as an elaborate code book, encrypting what Stoker secretly (or not-so-secretly) believed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 111 - 129
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

A. J. M. M. “Theosophy, or Christianity?” Women's Penny Paper 13 Dec. 1890: 115.Google Scholar
Acheson, Alan. “The Evangelical Revival in Ireland: A Study in Christology.” Churchman 108.2 (1994): 143–53.Google Scholar
Bailey, Walter. “The Pulpit.” Bristol Mercury and Daily Post 9 Dec. 1899: 1.Google Scholar
Bebbington, D. W. “Atonement, Sin and Empire, 1880–1914.” The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions 1880–1914. Ed. Neil Porter, Andrew. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 2003. 14–31.Google Scholar
Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.Google Scholar
Blavatsky, Helena. Letter to Corson, H. P., 22 Mar. 1876. The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. 1. Ed. Algeo, John. Wheaton: The Theosophical Publishing House, 2003. 256–59.Google Scholar
Bowles, Noelle. “Crucifix, Communion and Convent: the Real Presence of Anglican Ritualism in Bram Stoker's Dracula.” Christianity and Literature 62.2 (2013): 243–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caird, Edward. The Evolution of Religion. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Glasgow: Maclehose and Sons, 1894.Google Scholar
Carpenter, W. B.The Permanent Elements of Religion: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the year 1887. London: Macmillan, 1889.Google Scholar
Craft, Christopher. Another Kind of Love: Male Homosexual Desire in English Discourse, 1850–1920. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.Google Scholar
Curtin, Philip D.The Image of Africa. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1973.Google Scholar
Daly, Nicholas. Modernism, Romance, and the Fin De Siècle: Popular Fiction and British Culture, 1880–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Ditchfield, G. M.The Evangelical Revival. London: UCL P, 1998.Google Scholar
Franklin, J. Jeffrey. The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Judith. “Technologies of Monstrosity: Bram Stoker's Dracula.” Victorian Studies 36.3 (1993): 333–52.Google Scholar
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Ed. Pine, Joslyn T.. Mineola: Dover Thrift Editions, 2007.Google Scholar
Herbert, Christopher. “Vampire Religion.” Representations 79.1 (2002): 100–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holden, Phillip. “Castle, Coffin, Stomach: Dracula and the Banality of the Occult.” Victorian Literature and Culture 29.2 (2001): 469–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jevons, F. B.An Introduction to the History of Religion. London: Macmillan, 1896.Google Scholar
Johnson, Dale. “Popular Apologetics in Late Victorian England: The Work of the Christian Evidence Society.” Journal of Religious History 11.4 (1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidd, Colin. The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koditschek, Theodore. Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Kuzmanovic, Dejan. “Vampiric Seduction and Vicissitudes of Male Identity in Bram Stoker's Dracula.” Victorian Literature and Culture 37.2 (2009): 411–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livingston, James C.Religious Thought in the Victorian Age: Challenges and Reconceptions. New York: T&T Clark International, 2006.Google Scholar
Maughan, Steven. “Imperial Christianity? Bishop Montgomery and the Foreign Missions of the Church of England, 1895–1915.” The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions 1880–1914. Ed. Neil Porter, Andrew. Grand Rapids: William Eerdmans, 2003. 32–57.Google Scholar
Maurice, Frederick Denison. The Religions of the World and Their Relations to Christianity Considered in Eight Lectures Founded by Robert Boyle. London: J. W. Parker, 1847.Google Scholar
McKee, Patricia. "Racialization, Capitalism, and Aesthetics in Stoker's Dracula.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 36.1 (2002): 42–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Susan. Imperialism at Home. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Mighall, Robert. A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History's Nightmares. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Milbank, Alison. “‘Powers Old and New’: Stoker's Alliances with Anglo-Irish Gothic.” Bram Stoker: History, Psychoanalysis, and The Gothic. Ed. Hughes, William. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. 12–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milbank, Alison. “The Victorian Gothic in English novels and stories, 1830–1880.” The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction. Ed. Hogle, Jerrold E.. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 145–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miles, Robert. Anne Radcliffe: The Great Enchantress. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Morash, Chris. “‘Ever Under Some Unnatural Condition’: Bram Stoker and the Colonial Fantastic.” Literature and the Supernatural. Ed. Cosgrove, Brian. Dublin: The Columba, 1995. 95–119.Google Scholar
Müller, Max. Introduction to the Science of Religion: Four Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution. London: Longmans, Green, 1873.Google Scholar
Murray, Paul. From the Shadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram Stoker. London: Jonathan Cape, 2004.Google Scholar
Owen, Alex. The Place of Enchantment. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2007.Google Scholar
Pember, G. H.Earth's Earliest Ages: And Their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy. 5th ed. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1889.Google Scholar
Pusey, E. B.Notes and Questions on the Catholic Faith and Religion: The Notes and Answers. London: Walter Smith and Innes, 1891. American Theological Library Association. Web. 18 Jan. 2012.Google Scholar
Redford, R. A.The Christian's Plea Against Modern Unbelief: A Hand-Book of Christian Evidence. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1881.Google Scholar
“Romanism in Board Schools: A Warning.” Friendly Companion: A Magazine for Youth and the Home Circle 1 Nov. 1895: 292.Google Scholar
Roth, Phyllis. Bram Stoker. Boston: Twayne, 1982.Google Scholar
Salmond, Principal Stewart. “Non-Christian Religions and Christianity.” Aberdeen Weekly Journal 6 Oct. 1898: 6.Google Scholar
Sanneh, Lamin. Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of West Africa. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Senf, Carol. “Dracula: The Unseen Face in the Mirror.” Journal of Narrative Technique 9.3 (1979): 160–70.Google Scholar
Starrs, D. Bruno. “Keeping The Faith: Catholicism in Dracula and its Adaptations.” Journal of Dracula Studies 6 (2004).Google Scholar
Stoker, Bram. “The Censorship of Fiction.” Nineteenth Century and After Sept. 1908: 479–87. Bram Stoker. Web. 17 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Stoker, Bram. College Historical Society: Address Delivered in the Dining Hall of Trinity College at the First Meeting of the Twenty-Eighth Session on Wednesday Evening, November 13, 1872. Dublin: James Charles and Son, 1872. Google Books. Web. 19 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Stoker, Bram. The New Annotated Dracula. Ed. Klinger, Leslie S.. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.Google Scholar
Stoker, Charlotte. Account of “The Cholera Horror” in a letter to Bram, c. 1875. A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker. Ed. Ludlam, Harry. London: W. Foulsham, 1962. 25–31.Google Scholar
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Trans. Howard, Richard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Wadge, Elisabeth. “The Scientific Spirit and the Spiritual Scientist: Moving in the Right Circles.” Victorian Review 26.1 (2000): 24–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler-Barclay, Marjorie. The Science of Religion in Britain, 1860–1915. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010.Google Scholar
Wilde, Lady Jane. Ancient Legends, Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, with Sketches of the Irish Past. London: Chatto & Windus, 1902.Google Scholar