Literature
Dracula: the son of the dragon and the nightmare of the West
Bram Stoker, raised on ghost stories told by his mother during a long childhood illness, turned those childhood fears into the most famous Gothic novel of all time: Dracula (1897). To write it, he drew on Carpathian legends, vampire folklore, and the historical figure of Vlad III of Wallachia, a 15th-century prince known as “the Impaler”, whose Romanian name means “son of the dragon” (and also “devil”). Stoker created an aristocratic and seductive count who brought an ancient curse into Victorian England. The novel, initially received coldly, became a myth through cinema. Stoker died in 1912, overshadowed by the sinking of the Titanic, but his character became the West’s immortal nightmare.
