Transylvania as a borderland between the west and the east Cover Image

Transylvania as a borderland between the west and the east
Transylvania as a borderland between the west and the east

Author(s): Marius-Mircea Crişan
Subject(s): Cultural history
Published by: Institutul de Cercetări Socio-Umane Gheorghe Şincai al Academiei Române
Keywords: British travel Literature; diary; tourism; Bram Stoker; Dracula; Eastern Europe

Summary/Abstract: The strongest wish of Jonathan Harker, Stoker’s British young lawyer who visits Transylvania for the first time, is to see all particularities of the region. He puts down in his diary everything he sees from his train window, people and landscape. The first feature of the character revealed to the readers is his curiosity. This attitude is typically touristic. Jonathan Harker’s curiosity is modelled after the curiosity of the British travellers who visited Transylvania in the 19th century. As Bram Stoker never came to this region, he relied on some travel memoirs. As his working notes for Dracula show, the Irish novelist worked for about seven years on this novel and read several books on Eastern Europe. The works which inspired the construction of Transylvania in Dracula are: William Wilkinson, An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (1820), Charles Boner, Transylvania: Its Products and Its People (1865), Andrew F. Crosse, Round About the Carpathians (1878), Nina Elizabeth Mazuchelli, Magyarland… (1881), Major E. C. Johnson, On the Track of the Crescent…(1888) and the article “Transylvanian Superstitions” by Emily Gerard.

  • Issue Year: 2008
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 57-63
  • Page Count: 5
  • Language: English