Representing Transylvania and Banat in vampire fiction: Speculative and speculated geographies in Dracula and Vampirul.
Authors: Martin, A.-S. and Light, D.
Journal: Transylvanian Review
Volume: XXXIV
Issue: 3
Pages: 41-64
Publisher: Romanian Cultural Foundation
eISSN: 1584-9422
ISSN: 1221-1249
DOI: 10.33993/TR.2025
Abstract:This article examines the representation of places within Romania in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Vampirul (1938), the first Romanian vampire novel, by G. M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu. Through a comparative reading, our study introduces the concept of “speculated geography” to describe how the imported Gothic trope of the vampire was locally reconfigured. If Stoker’s portrayal of Transylvania is a form of speculative geography—a fictionalized, exoticized Romanian region shaped by Western bias and second-hand travel accounts—Amza and Bilciurescu’s Vampirul enacts a speculated geography of Banat, a real Romanian region reframed through the authors’ familiarity with the region, the period’s vampire cinema, and the socio-political anxieties of interwar Romania. The article argues that Vampirul reconfigures the imported vampire myth into a local critique of ethnic hierarchies, industrial modernity, and post-imperial nationhood.
https://centruldestudiitransilvane.ro/
Source: Manual