Visit our sister website, www.mysterious-journeys.com. The transylvanian society of draculaA non-for-profit global organisation, open for all serious students and fans of the Dracula story
Twenty years have passed since the 1995 Congress; the Society has organised yearly international symposia, colloquia, and (nearly) every five years another WORLD DRACULA CONGRESS. Our TSD members have developed new insights that even go beyond the positions worded between 1995 and 2010: in April 2012, when the centennial of Bram Stoker's death was commemorated with several international conferences, a more radical critique of the simplifications of the 1970's and 1980's became avalable. A closer reading of Dracula revealed that Bram Stoker never wanted to tie up Jonathan Harker's terrible host with a historical person that all too easily could be identified from the descriptions in his narrative - such as Vlad III Dracula. Instead, in Chapter 25 of Dracula Professor Van Helsing and Mina Harker discuss "an other" of the Dracula race, living in "a later age," and connect this anonymous "other" to the lifetime habits of their enemy. Possibly, Stoker had Michael the Brave (1558-1601) in mind, another Wallachian leader from the Dracula dynasty, who actively fought the Turks across the Danube and actually "commanded nations": for a short time in the year 1600, he united Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia under his command. But as we can see from the novel, Bram did not want to give this "other" the name of this Voivode, although he had read about Michael in Wilkinson's book about Wallachia and Moldavia (1820) and taken notes on him. Still other fascinating discoveries have been made over
the last few years, and therefore we are proud to announce that the 25th
birthday of
the TSD will be celebrated by another WORLD DRACULA CONGRESS: the
TSD International Open Conference at Trinity
College in Dublin, open to all scholars and fans of the Gothic. The initiative was
taken by Hans de Roos, Munich, a Knight in the Order of Count Dracula, soon
supported by Dr Magdalena Grabias, Assistant
Professor at the Department of Cultural Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University in Lublin, Poland, and by Kristin Bone, MA, a young Gothic Fiction author
from the US, who studied English Literature at the University of
Hertfordshire and at Trinity College, Dublin.
Together, we have formed an Organisation Committee, hoping to make this
conference a great success. This website will inform you about all the
details. 3 October 2015
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