摘 要

。

哥特小说是一种独特的小说体裁，它常以古堡、荒地等为故事背景来创建一个恐怖的氛围，故事情节充满着复仇、谋杀、强奸等暴力片段。哥特小说的诞生不仅为英美文学开辟出了一条崭新的路线，同时也为人们提供了一个很好的揭露社会黑暗面的机会。这篇论文是为了详述爱尔兰作家布朗姆斯托克的杰作-德古拉中的哥特传统。依次介绍哥特的起源和发展，哥特传统在传统英美文学中的主要特点，并从三方面结合本篇小说《德古拉》介绍其中的哥特元素：超能力；扭曲的心理；恐怖的环境。最后，得出结论：黑色浪漫文学体裁的小说《德古拉》是哥特小说中的杰出之作，它可以满足受众的基本心理需求，同时对英美文学的发展有着很大的影响，而且也具备一定的文学地位和研究价值。

关键词：德古拉；哥特传统；英美文学；黑暗；心理。

Abstract

Gothic novel is a kind of distinctive novel style , the story always happens at castles or wastelands to establish a horrible atmosphere, the scenario usually full of revenge, murder and rape. The appearance of the Gothic literature not only create a brand new way for British and America literature, but also provides a good opportunity for people to reveal the darkness of the society. The paper is to interpret the Gothic traditions in the Irish writer Bram Stoker’s masterpiece —Dracula. The paper,after introduce the origin, development and main feature of Gothic traditions in classical British and American literature, typifies the Gothic elements in the novel Dracula from three aspects, namely, the supernatural power, distorted psychology, grim environment. Finally, it arrives at the conclusion that Dracula, as a masterpiece in Gothic novel – a dark romantic literary genre, can cater to the audience’s fundamental psychological need. Meanwhile，it has influenced the development of the British and American literature and has certain literary position and research value.

Key Words: Dracula; Gothic tradition; British and American literature darkness; psychology

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The analysis of Gothic tradition 3

2.1 The development and origin of the Gothic tradition 3

2.2 The element of Gothic tradition 5
2.3 The significance of the Gothic tradition on modern literature 5

3 The analysis of Dracula 7

3.1 The analysis of the novel’s setting 7

3.2 The analysis of the novel’s plot 7
3.3 The analysis of the novel’s character(Dracula) 8

4 The interpretation on the Gothic traditions in Dracula 10

4.1 The supernatural power 10

4.2 Distorted psychology 11
4.3 Grim environment 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 17

Interpretation on the Gothic traditions in Dracula by Bram Stoker

1 Introduction

The author of Dracula is a novelist Abraham Bram Stoker, who was born on November 8, and dead on 1847 - April 20, 1912. He was born in Dublin suburbs Taft, and he was an Irish English novelist, and early used to write plays for Dublin evening news comments. In 1897 he published the novel Dracula and therefore, at this point the novel and another Irish writer Joseph Snow Glidden Finn together became the vampire literature classic novelists.

Dracula has been recognized as a classic, not only has been translated into many words, but also have been adapted for stage, film and TV series, affect the generations of writers. Named after the names of the authors, Bram Stoker Awards, is the highest award of horror fiction, and a famous contemporary American writer Stephen king had won the award. The novel is widely popular, so that when it comes to the vampire, people first think of Dracula, Dracula pretty much becomes synonymous with vampire, and his hometown, Nancyvania also became the tourist destination many people are flocking to.

The meaning of Dracula most important is that it opens the vampire theme of the novel, provide examples for the offspring of the vampire culture. While Dracula's image has a certain historical significance, he became literature history continuation of enduring classic role in one hundred.

For the Gothic literature, it should date back to the late 18th century British literature The Castle of Otranto, which created the traditional Gothic novels, is the ancestor of Gothic literature creation. After the 1790s, the Gothic literature got the extension and development, many works of the British and American literature are given priority to with Gothic style[2]. Traditional Gothic literature mainly expressed the mysterious, violence, extreme, gloomy, decadent, such as human emotion, usually with mysterious building, family curse, suspense cases and other works as a selling point, and the wilderness, ruins, the castle as the background, the plot is full of excitement and terror, and with rape, revenge, violence, murder, or talking about some supernatural phenomenon, ghosts, gods. Gothic literature is full of suspense, dark atmosphere of terror, and with mystery, it can let a person feel the unique shock and artistic glamour. British and American literature created a lot of Gothic style of literary works, and gradually formed a Gothic tradition. The Gothic tradition developed up to now, had gradually become the British and American literature research key point, the studies of English and American literature for the Gothic tradition are mainly in terms of breadth, depth, and combined the European literature history, culture, society with the Gothic tradition to analyze the Gothic tradition in British and American literature development.

2. The analysis of Gothic tradition

2.1 The development and origin of the Gothic tradition

The literary works with Gothic style did not get initially literary recognition, during the Renaissance, people yearned for the classical era, and Gothic literature appeared in the Renaissance and classical age stage of the middle ages, between the middle ages Gothic literature was not recognized. Before the 18th century, the Gothic represented the name of a country, a kill burned robbery attack on the Roman state, the brilliant civilization history of the Roman empire disappeared due to the Goths, from now on, Goths was familiar by people with a violent and brutal image. The Italians called the late medieval period Gothic out of strong bear grudges for Goths. After the fall of the empire, an Italian called Vasari found the word “Gothic” in the long history. At that time the word was especially acknowledged for a kind architecture style which was not fond by the ideologists of the renaissance in the middle ages. This kind of building style was widely used in churches and castles during 12 to 16 centuries. The representatives are the Notre Dae de Paris and the St.Paul's Cathedral in England with skyward steeples, massive stone walls, narrow windows and so on, which is perfectly the symbol of the so called“the Dark Ages” replacing the splendid civilization of Roman. Consequently, many interpretations were given to this vocabulary, such as barbarous, horror, backward, mysterious and etc.

After the eighteenth century, “Gothic” became a different kind novel genre with the background of castles or wastelands. The stories often happened in the past, especially in the middle ages. The scenarios mostly full of violence, revenge, rape, even some supernatural phenomenons like ghosts. The fictions were surrounded with gloomy atmosphere and suspense. The first Gothic fiction, The Castle of Otranto, was published in 1764, because it had violated the allegory of traditional novels, serious, scientific and rational ideas, so it set off a heated discussion in the western literature with highly critical challenge and controversy. Furthermore, this novel was subtitled by Horace Wapole with “ A Gothic Story” so that this kind of novels were designated as Gothic novels later on. In the period of the Enlightenment the thoughts of novel were scientific and rational, such as Pamela and Lubin Sun Crusoe literature as representation. Gothic literature rapid occupation, as people gradually understanding the Gothic literature, found that the Gothic novel did not exist inevitable contradictions, and the masterpiece of British literature, The Castle of Otranto, in the published works showed that the fusion of traditional literature and Gothic literature style was a kind of experimental trial.

Gothic tradition was originated in the 18th century, which was a new creative way of British and American literature with a warm response causing deeper influence on English and American literature, and even affected the literary creation of the 20th century. Later, British and American literature gradually became representative in the field of horror literature, and formed the large series of terror ,and since then British and American literature on the Gothic tradition was made an intensive study, and the Gothic tradition of research in the academic trend gradually showed its importance. After that, Britain and the United States published many books and papers about Gothic literature, and Gothic traditional research scope was gradually expanding.

Although Gothic novel has no connection with Goths, but abundant folklore and numerous middle-aged romantic stories based on that in Nordic are the important resources of Gothic novel. During the process of the long- term migrating and endless wars of Nordics in the severe natural environment of northern Europe, they created variety legends to reflect the horror and terror of the wars they had been through.

Another significant origin of Gothic tradition is the drama in the British Renaissance. In this period, British drama was deeply influenced by the Roman playwright Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and full of revenge, conspiracy, violence and murder and even ghosts, so that the plots are extremely exciting, breathtaking and thrilling. Especially, the plays of Shakespeare and Jacobean Tragedies made great contribution to the appearance and development of Gothic novel.