PISANIE JAKO MODELOWANIE ŚWIATA. DRACULA BRAMA STOKERA
WRITING AS MODELLING OF THE WORLD. DRACULA BY BRAM STOKER

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to explore the constructional peculiarities of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and their functions. The novel is a conglomerate of various jottings, diary entries, letters, press cuttings and the like, with no main narrative frame. Moreover, it falls into three parts, each of which is not only organized according to a different principle but also communicates a different model of reality. The first part is Jonathan’s journal, ending with the note announcing the young lawyer’s attempt to escape from the Castle of Dracula. The world there is evidently modeled after the early Gothic novel, where the castle is a sphere of reality governed by different laws (the uncanny aspect of Castle Dracula is still enhanced by the fact that it seems to exist beyond space and can be reached only at a particular time – at midnight, on St. George’s Eve.) The second part – ending with the word Finis in Doctor Seward’s diary – presents a mimetic model of the world, the order of which has been disturbed by a series of inexplicable events. The composition of this part (a-chronological, with many narrators, often ignorant of each others’ fates) turns the reader into a detective who has to reconstruct the true course of events on the basis of the characters’ evidence. The jottings in the third part constitute a consistent narrative, whereas the world model is consistent too, even if the original version of reality (the mimetic one) is corrected and the existence of vampires is eventually acknowledged. In each case, the world model dominant in a given part results from the way the jottings are ordered – the pattern being even more complicated by the ending, which restores the mimetic world order.

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