A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
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Daniela Carpi,
Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Literatures, Department of English Studies, University of Verona. Her fields of research are: Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she edits a “Culture” section devoted to comparative criticism and an “Agon” section on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (together with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) a “Law and Literature” series. She is the Coordinator of the Doctoral Course in English Studies at the University of Verona. She is in the scientific board of the journalsSymbolism: a Journal of Critical Aesthetics (New York),Anglistik (Heidelberg),La torre di Babele (Parma),Law and Humanities (Warwick),Cardozo Law Bulletin (University of Trento). She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications: D. Carpi, ed.,The Concept of Equity: an Interdisciplinary Assessment (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007); D. Carpi, ed.,Practising Equity, Addressing Law (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008); D. Carpi, ed.,Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter, 2011).
Abstract
A large part of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula focuses on the intricacies of property relations, that is the social, legal and personal stakes of ownership. Property rights are thematized vis-à-vis human rights. In the novel the notion of personal property and the idea of subjectivity are intertwined. The evolution of Dracula's identity in the course of the novel moves from that of the wanderer, given his condition of undead, rooted in a place outside history and time (the castle, the snowy wilderness) to that of new capitalistic man, well rooted in civilized society thanks to his acquisition of a mansion. Dracula tries to become part of Western civilization through his possessions and by acquiring a settled position. It is a symbolic sense of geography and possession that epitomizes Dracula's attempt at existing as a legal persona. This also entails the inclusion of a new type of legal identity within the western racial corpus. The right to property is deeply felt by the whole of mankind and considered as intrinsic in the individual's self-identification. The aim of my paper is that of analysing the various functions of property in the novel in the creation of an independent individual.
About the author
Daniela Carpi is Full Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Foreign Literatures, Department of English Studies, University of Verona. Her fields of research are: Renaissance theatre, critical theory, postmodernism, law and literature, literature and science, literature and visual arts. She collaborates with Ombre Corte in Verona, where she edits a “Culture” section devoted to comparative criticism and an “Agon” section on law and culture; with DeGruyter in Berlin, where she edits (together with professor Klaus Stierstorfer) a “Law and Literature” series. She is the Coordinator of the Doctoral Course in English Studies at the University of Verona. She is in the scientific board of the journals Symbolism: a Journal of Critical Aesthetics (New York), Anglistik (Heidelberg), La torre di Babele (Parma), Law and Humanities (Warwick), Cardozo Law Bulletin (University of Trento). She has founded the Associazione Italiana di Diritto e Letteratura (AIDEL), which she presides. Among her most recent publications: D. Carpi, ed., The Concept of Equity: an Interdisciplinary Assessment (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007); D. Carpi, ed., Practising Equity, Addressing Law (Heidelberg: Winter, 2008); D. Carpi, ed., Bioethics and Biolaw through Literature (Berlin/Boston: DeGruyter, 2011).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Focus: Identity
- In Search of a Legal Identity: Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta
- A Biojuridical Reading of Dracula
- Women's Legal Identity in the Context of Gothic Effacement: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper
- Voice and Identity in the Fairy Tale: Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch
- “Are you alive?” Issues in Self-awareness and Personhood of Organic Artificial Intelligence
- Between Bioethics and Literature: Representations of (post-)human identities in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood
- Law and Literature: Jewish and Christian models
- The Vitality of Emotional Background Knowledge in Court
- Corpus delicti: The evidence of the body as body of evidence in Thomas Hobbes's political imagination
- Book Reviews
