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“Only a Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula as a Tale of Mad Science and Faustian Redemption

Davydov, Leah Christiana
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1494069279953216

Abstract Details

2017, Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
While present Dracula scholarship has made an extensive examination of the ways in which the novel reflects apprehensions about late Victorian scientific advances, little work to date has been done to link these anxieties to fin de siecle fiction involving mad scientists or to Bram Stoker’s lifelong interest in the story of Dr. Faustus. In this work, I argue that the primary menace within Dracula is not actually the threat posed by the novel’s vampires but rather the threat posed by the biologically determined, materialist, and potentially “mad” science practiced by the characters of Dr. John Seward and his patient, R. M. Renfield, who may both be read as Faust figures. I further assert that the existence of vampires, which demonstrates the reality of bodies without souls, also affirms the reality of bodies with souls, repudiating the viewpoint represented by Seward and Renfield, and in the course of the novel, both characters may be understood as moving from a dogmatic, aspiritual model of scientific inquiry that allows for callous and unethical experimentation to a compassionate, empiricist model of scientific inquiry as modelled by the characters of Jonathan and Mina Harker.
Gary Dyer, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Rachell Carnell, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Brooke Conti, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
71 p.
Literature
Bram Stoker; Dracula; Faust; medicine; neuroscience; materialism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Davydov, L. C. (2017). “Only a Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula as a Tale of Mad Science and Faustian Redemption [Master's thesis, Cleveland State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1494069279953216

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Davydov, Leah. “Only a Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula as a Tale of Mad Science and Faustian Redemption. 2017. Cleveland State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1494069279953216.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Davydov, Leah. "“Only a Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula as a Tale of Mad Science and Faustian Redemption." Master's thesis, Cleveland State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1494069279953216

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

csu1494069279953216
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© 2017, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License “Only a Sufficient Cause:" Bram Stoker's Dracula as a Tale of Mad Science and Faustian Redemption by Leah Christiana Davydov is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Cleveland State University and OhioLINK.