ABSTRACT
Bram Stoker was not the first Western author to write about Transylvania (Miller 1997) but he was certainly the most influential. In writing Dracula he needed an appropriate home for his vampire and Transylvania – a region he had never visited and knew little about – suited his purposes perfectly. It was a real place but at the same time it was almost completely unknown among his readers. It was identifiably European but at the same time was situated in an uncertain, liminal position on the very edge of Europe. It was close enough to be recognizable but distant enough to be threatening. Stoker portrayed Transylvania as a terrifying place and therefore an entirely plausible home for a predatory Eastern vampire that posed a real menace to the West. Stoker gave full rein to his imagination and seems to have relished writing about Transylvania: the parts of the novel that are set there are often considered to be the most inspired and they have certainly been the most influential. Bram Stoker effectively invented Transylvania as we understand it today. In writing Dracula he set in motion a distinctive, alluring and enduring place myth of Transylvania that has now taken on a momentum of its own. In the Western imagination the word ‘Transylvania’ effortlessly conjures up images of a dark, mountainous and forested land, peopled by fearful, superstitious peasants, where sinister vampires and other supernatural creatures reign unchecked.
