1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Cultural Study on Dracula : Xenophobia in Victorian Britain
| Project/Area Number |
09610470
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
TANJI Ai Graduate School of Arts and Science, The University of Tokyo, Professor, 大学院・総合文化研究科, 教授 (90133686)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1997 – 1999
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| Keywords | Stoker / Dracula / xenophobia / fear of cholera / germ theory / Orientalism / antisemitic |
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| Research Abstract |
I interpret Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), regarding the "vague fear" its characters feel toward Dracula as a sign of the three types of late Victorian xenophobia, that is (1) fear of invasion, (2) fear of Jews, and (3) fear of cholera More concretely,
(1) "Fear of Invasion and the Failure of the Channel Tunnel Project" deals with the fear that England is about to be invaded by Western powers such as Germany and the United States. The fear can be detected in the late Victorian controversy on the Channel Tunnel project, the Venezuelan boundary question, and the diplomatic and military policy of the Splendid Isolation.
(2) "Fear of Intermarriage and Holocaust" treats the antisemitic fear that more and more Jewish immigrants win damage British society by corrupting and degenerating the British blood. I read the happy ending of the destruction of Dracula as suggestive of the nightmare of holocaust.
(3) 'Fear of Miasmata and Fear of Germs" deals with the fear of cholera as an Asatic disease attacking the Wetern world in the context of the Pasteur revolution in which the germ theory of disease was being established at the sacrifice of the miasma theory.
I attempt to show how a nation, in the process of creating its national identity, invents the idea of the Other, which it projects on some other area or race.
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