DRACULA

BRAM STOKER (1847-1912)

Mysterious and tormented: that's what we know about Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. And, indeed, that is how he must have been to imagine such a bloodthirsty creature. 104 years later, the author is perhaps not so well remembered but Dracula is certainly still as famous as ever. It's a case of a character that has "eliminated" its author!

The forgotten writer.

Who could have imagined such a thing?

What feverish, tormented, creepy imagination could the bloodiest novel of all times have come from? Who was the inventor of Count Dracula, the famous vampire that would end up terrifying the whole of England and the rest of the world?

His name was Bram Stoker, a practically unknow writer when his novel appeared in London in 1997. Dracula is his creation, the creature who has even managed to "vampirise" his author by becoming more famous than the man himself.

Dracula, the character is now 115 years old, and is still going strong. The "number one vampire" regularly decides to come out of the dark to appear on TV, in comics or in the cinema (there are 80 films about this "adventures"!). What a grat success this was for the obscure Bram Stoker, who wrote only one masterpiece in his whole life, and it was this one!

*creepy: tenebrós

*indeed: efectivament

 

SUMMARY OF THE PLOT (novel):

Jonathan Harker, a young notary, goes to Transylvania to negotiate a sale with Count Dracula. It doesn't take him long to discover his host's terrible secret: Dracula is a vampire that goes out at night to quench his thirst for human blood.

When he arrives in England, Dracula chooses as his victim Lucy, who is a friend of Mina, Jonatan's fiancée. Lucy bleeds to death.

Will Jonathan Harker, Mina and the condescending professor Van Helsing manage to defeat the vampire? The novel appears as a dossier of letters and parts of the diaries of each of the different characters.

TRAILER:

DEVILS AN HEROES

Vambéry told Bram Stoker the story Vlad, a Romanian prince wholived in the XV century, and was known as "Vlad the Implaer" because of his bloodthirsty reputation. He also learned about Dracula, whose name comes from the Romanian word "Dracul", which means "devil". Stoker, facinated by the sound of this name decided to give it to the main character of his next novel. Dracula was a vampire, a dead man that comes alive at night and leaves his coffin tho quanch his thirst for human blood. 

THE SUPERNATURAL

He wrote stories for children, in which it became clar that he was interesed in the supernatural. He took this interestet even futher by joining a secret society whose objective was to make contract with "great, unknow and superior beings" through magic and astrology. There he met Arminius Vambéry, a man  who firmly beleived in the existence of vampires. Stoker was fascinated by this, and straight away started studying the legends of the Eastern countries which are full of these evil creatures. 

Vocabulary.