(M)eating Dracula: Food and Death in Stoker's Novel

What is it about?

I undertake a nonanthropocentric, EcoGothic approach to vampirism in Dracula, examining how the relation between the consumption of nonhuman flesh and blood reflects the evolving meaning of species, nation, and gender in nineteenth-century European society. I argue that flesh consumption plays a key role in the development of nutritional allegories and nonhuman vampirism, and that the Count’s resistance to the dominant, meat-eating ideology destablises the carnal borderline between the species.

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Why is it important?

The essay takes an original approach to Dracula to consider vampirism from a nonhuman perspective, that is based on the consumption of animal flesh as well as human blood.