Dracula: Sense & Nonsense by Elizabeth Miller

Abstract

REVIEWS nary, a Boswell first, and a 1649 Lucasta by Lovelace, a high­ light of the sale at £10/15/-. Carroll also owned lots of Scott, Tennyson, and the Brontes. This is not to say that the thesis propounded by Reichertz is wrong. There is enough internal evidence in the Carroll books to dem onstrate the author’s knowledge of earlier English chil­ dren’s literature. It is, however, difficult to be quite as precise concerning the influences as he would like us to be, and the debate about how, exactly, Lewis Carroll fits into the canon of English literature will continue. RICHARD LANDON / University of Toronto Elizabeth Miller. Dracula: Sense & Nonsense. Westcliff-on-Sea: Desert Island Books, 2000. 256. $29.95 (U.S.) cloth. The Desert Island Books website proudly asserts that Eliza­ beth Miller’s Dracula: Sense & Nonsense “has a claim to be the most im portant ever written on the subject of Dracula.” W hether that is true or not remains to be seen; it is, how­ ever, an impressive compendium of misinformation about Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror classic. Miller, who teaches English at New­ foundland’s Memorial University, sets straight not only leading Dracula scholars, but also non-specialists and popular film and television documentaries that have perpetuated wrong infor­ m ation about events in the novel and the facts surrounding its composition, the supposed “real” Count Dracula and his cas­ tle, and even rumours surrounding Stoker himself. While she does not present any new interpretations of the novel, Miller is intent on demolishing critical readings — particularly psychoan­ alytic readings — based on faulty knowledge. She keeps strictly to provable facts and is extremely wary of any sort of conjecture. As a result, Dracula: Sense & Nonsense is essential reading for anyone attem pting a critical study of Stoker’s novel. Dracula: Sense & Nonsense is part of a series, The Desert Island Dracula Library, developed by literary scholar and pub­ lisher Clive Leatherdale to reinstate Bram Stoker’s place in the literary canon. While six of the twelve books available in The Li­ brary are studies of the novel itself, the remaining six offer mod749 ESC 28, 2002 era annotated editions of Stoker’s other works. Although none of these is as im portant as Dracula, they do set Stoker’s bestknown novel in an im portant context. Thus, while the small Desert Island catalogue may seem to have an eclectic focus — its main publications apart from studies of Bram Stoker are an extensive collection of histories of British soccer teams and some historical studies of Essex — it is no vanity press, and Miller’s book lives up to proper scholarly standards. Miller divides her study into several sections — not quite “compiled like an encyclopedia,” as the Desert Island website would have us believe — arranged in short entries. She begins each entry with a quotation from a misguided source and then offers both a pithy editorial remark and a longer explanation of the facts. Some of the sections, such as those on Stoker’s sources and the composition of the novel, are clearly of interest mainly to specialists, although they do provide useful back­ ground information on Stoker and his research on vampires. Miller also effectively dispels speculation about Stoker’s psychosexual motives for writing the book, particularly speculation about his repressed homosexual hero-worship of Henry Irving, his sexless marriage to Florence Stoker, and his death allegedly from syphilis (not true!). The chapter on misinformation about events in the novel itself will be hardly surprising to anyone who has actually read the book. The chapter is useful, though, for drawing attention to details that readers too familiar with Hollywood film versions may miss. For example, Dracula is not killed by sunlight; Miller lists several occasions where the Count conducts his London business during daylight hours. Similarly, the long-held assertion that Dracula is killed with a stake to the heart is shown to be untrue: while the vampire form of Lucy W estenra is dispatched in such a manner, Dracula himself is killed with two knives. Finally, Miller puts to rest any notion that Stoker’s Count has any erotic appeal for Lucy (or anyone else...