O gótico e o medo em Drácula, de Bram Stoker

Abstract

The present study shows a literary analysis of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897) from the perspective of fear, considering themes related to Gothic, such as religion, sexuality, death, and duality. For this, it was taken into account the historical contextualization concerning the period in which Dracula was produced, how was made the research of the figure of the vampires as myths and as symbols of classic Gothic horror literature. For the understanding of how emerged the Gothic literature, the concepts of Fred Botting (1996) and H. P. Lovecraft (2007) were referenced here. In this sense, the main objective of this work was to analyze the image of the vampire as portrayed in that classic of literature, by trying to observe how fear is articulated with the construction of the character in his Gothic environment. It can be concluded that in representing the fears and anxieties of the human being, the vampire then relates to the idea of the uncanny of Sigmund Freud (2006) and is deeply connected to concepts common to all human beings. Facing the feelings of strangeness and ambiguity that the vampire figure evokes, the characters who face Dracula face their greatest and darkest fears. Past traumas return in fantastic and supernatural representations projected onto the undead figure who returns blood-thirsty from his tomb.