Description
Glover's efforts reveal a writer who was more wide-ranging and politically engaged than his current reputation suggests. An Irish Protestant and nationalist, Stoker nonetheless drew his political inspiration from English liberalism at a time of impending crisis, and the tradition's contradictions and uncertainties haunt his work. At the heart of Stoker's writing Glover exposes a preoccupation with those sciences and pseudo-sciences-from physiognomy and phrenology to eugenics and sexology-that seemed to cast doubt on the liberal faith in progress. He argues that Dracula should be read as a text torn between the stances of the colonizer and the colonized, unable to accept or reject the racialized images of backwardness that dogged debates about Irish nationhood. As it tracks the phantasmatic form given to questions of character and individuality, race and production, sexuality and gender, across the body of Stoker's writing, Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals draws a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary transitional figure.
Combining psychoanalysis and cultural theory with detailed historical research, this book will be of interest to scholars of Victorian and Irish fiction and to those concerned with cultural studies and popular culture.
About the Author
David Glover is Lecturer in English at the University of Southampton.
Reviews
"Excellent. In Vampires, Mummies, and Liberals Glover finally elaborates on the multiple and multiplying contradictions that emerge among the shifting political, racial, and sexual discourses with which Stoker's works constantly intersect."-David Lloyd, University of California, Berkeley
"Glover's Stoker is far more interesting than the more typical sensationalized portraits of the author as vampire-wanna-be and more convincing than some of the fanciful and speculative interpretations of recent literary critics. Beautifully written, this is a study of considerable complexity and unfailing intelligence."-Mary Poovey, Johns Hopkins University
Book Information
ISBN 9780822317982
Author David Glover
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 907g