East-West Cultural Encounters in Romania: The Vlad/Dracula Connection
East-West Cultural Encounters in Romania: The Vlad/Dracula Connection

Summary/Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century, many Western tourists have become interested in visiting Transylvania, a region in the central part of Romania, in Eastern Europe, in order to discover the stories and legends about Count Dracula, a mysterious and ruthless vampire, who, some believe, might have inhabited various solitary places in the heart of Transylvania. Some of these tourists may know that the Dracula vampire story originated in a novel written by Bram Stoker, who placed the vampire in Transylvania, a faraway mythic space, and the legends woven around this fictional character have created an intriguing link between the vampire figure and a real-life, fifteenth-century Romanian ruler, Vlad Ţepeș/Dracula. As a result of Western media representations of the Dracula myth, in time, Romania has acquired (and developed) a connection with the vampire myth. Therefore, this paper sets out to examine the impact of the Dracula myth on the postcommunist society, by exploring the historical and cultural dimensions of the “Dracula connection,” reflected in the dichotomy between the Romanian general perception about Vlad Dracula as a medieval ruler and “the other” Romanian version of the Dracula vampire ersona loosely based on Vlad Dracula (a version constructed for a Western “audience” for commercial and touristic purposes).

• Details
• Contents