Critics Flashcards
Rossetti, Wilde, Shakespeare, Stoker and Carter
What does Luckhurst think about Dracula (the novel)?
The novel is “sensationalist” and “absurdist”, the “condensation and cauldron of anxieties (of the late Victorian era)”, yet the “debates are timeless”.
What does Luckhurst say about male desire?
“Male desire devours its prey, and woman is trichotomised into mother, virgin, whore”
What does Sarah Waters say about Dracula (the novel)?
She claims it is “an exercise in masculine anxiety and nationalist paranoia” and that “Stoker’s novel is filled with scenes that are staggeringly lurid an perverse”.
What does Skal describe Count Dracula as?
“the greatest sex monster of all time”
What does McElligott describe Stoker as?
“a loyal and [a strongly] patriotic supporter of the monarchy”
According to Ashley, what were the Victorians afraid of?
“the creeping foreign ‘other’”
What does Bristow say about Stoker’s racism?
“Stoker’s racism was common among his contemporaries”
How does Davison describe Count Dracula?
“Dracula is essentially a social polluter who threatens to infect the British Nation”
What does Hughes say that the stereotypical vampires are derived from?
“the redcurrant myth of the wandering Jew”
According to Phillips, what makes Dracula more mortifying?
Dracula has “mastered the skill of mingling with the crowd in the modern city”
How does Ray Cluley link Dracula to the patriarchy?
He claims that Dracula may be “the ultimate patriarchal fantasy” as his “consumption of blood is a triumph over fears of menstruation” and he usurps the “female role of creating life in creating more vampires”
What does Chaplin highlight?
“the Gothic developed two modes of expression that continue to influence the genre to this day: ‘terror’ and ‘horror’
How does Radcliffe define terror?
“obscurity” or indeterminacy in its treatment of potentially horrible events
How does Radcliffe define horror?
horror “nearly annihilates” the reader’s responsive capacity with its unambiguous displays of atrocity
What does Hendershot say about the Gothic?
“The gothic disrupts… it takes societal norms and invades them”
