ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the novel in relation to myth, Gothic fiction, vampire stories and fantasy, and introduces a Freudian interpretation. Chris Baldick treats Dracula and the other fantasies as variants of the Frankenstein myth, but it is important not to neglect the ways in which Dracula is different from Frankenstein. Like Frankenstein and many other fantasies of the late nineteenth century, Dracula belongs to the Gothic tradition, which can be traced back to the end of the eighteenth century and the novels of Ann Radcliffe, Horace Walpole, Charles Maturin and Matthew 'Monk' Lewis. The chapter looks at one of Sheridan Le Fanu's short stories, 'Carmilla', which strongly influenced Dracula and examines the implications of reading Dracula as a Gothic story. In 1929, Ernest Jones, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, wrote 'On the nightmare', an essay that included a discussion of vampires, but that made no mention of Dracula.
