“Welcome to My House! Enter Freely and of Your Own Free Will”: Dracula in International Contexts

Abstract

The volume of essays, which is structured on both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, follows a chronological approach, as it starts with Gothic influences on Stoker’s Dracula, continues with new insights on the context of the novel, follows the development of the vampiric myth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and concludes with a synoptic study of the evolution of the gothic space. This introductory chapter argues, as well as the whole volume, that the development of the Dracula myth is the result of complex international influences and cultural interactions.