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The aim of this project is to build a comprehensive database of the literary sources that Bram Stoker used, or possibly used, in the composition of his iconic novel Dracula. Initial construction of this resource has steadily proceeded this past Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 semesters, and our work in progress is hosted on a Rutgers OIT server enabling us to utilize high speed search and retrieval software.
The texts forming the core of this project fall into four categories. First are the notes that Stoker himself compiled in the course of writing the novel, currently stored at the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, and published in a facsimile edition by Robert Eighteen-Bisang and Elizabeth Miller (McFarland, 2008). Second is a corpus of twelve nonfiction sources that Stoker is known to have taken notes from. Third is a corpus of twenty nonfiction sources listed by Stoker, but not reflected in surviving research notes. Finally, we have a collection of five literary texts (e.g., early vampire novels) which possibly may have influenced Stoker.
At this stage in the project, my research assistant (Ian Wardell) and I have organized the site on the basis of texts from the second and third categories listed above. With continuation support next year, our aim is to complete the database with inclusion of digitized color facsimiles of the Rosenbach Foundation notes, an OCR scanned version of the Eighteen-Bisang & Miller transcriptions, and the literary texxts.
The pedagogical aim of this project is to enable interested Rutgers students and faculty to utilize this comprehensive database as a platform for close study of Stoker's creation of his novel, as well as Victorian perceptions of eastern Europe & the Ottoman Empire (this through the travel literature which Stoker utilized), and likewise conceptions of the supernatural and occult (principally vampire beliefs). I myself will incorporate the site in future versions of an Aresty/Byrne seminar, and my regular History Department lecture course (510:255 "Dracula: Facts and Fictions"). We anticipate that colleagues and students in the English Department will find the site and its potentials useful as well. Until all copyright issues are resolved, various sectors targeted for classroom use may need to be password protected. Other parts of the website, where such restrictions do not apply, will be open to the public and thus will serve to stimulate interest in the courses as well as Aresty/Byrne seminars and their mission.
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