Vlad the Impaler : in search of the real Dracula / M.J. Trow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trow, M. J.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, 1430 or 1431-1476 or 1477.

Vlad.

Dracula, Count (Fictitious character).

Dracula.

Wallachia--History.

Wallachia.

Wallachia--Kings and rulers--Biography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

v, 280 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stroud : Sutton, 2003.

Summary:

In spring 1460, wrote a contemporary, 'untold abuses, damage hardly reparable, sad murders, multilations, sorrows' were visited upon the city of Brasov, by 'the unfaithful cruel tyrant Dracula, who calls himself Vlad, prince ... He did this following the teaching of the Devil.' According to legend, he impaled his victims, then sat at table mopping up their blood from his plate; later he hung the still live bodies of opposing forces on a field of stakes. So began the history of Vlad the Impaler. But were his actions the righteous defence of a kingdom, an act of vengeance for the cruel deaths of his father and brother? Or the unspeakable fury of a madman with a taste for blood? In his new book, crime writer and historian M.J. Trow peels back the layers of myth and history to reveal the real man whose name gave birth to a legend. He explores the terror with which the character was once associated, going backwards in time from the celluloid Count of Hammer and Universal Studios to the literary creations of Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu and John Polidori. Before that, the folklore of Europe, from Ireland to Russia, carries terrifying tales of bloodsucking ghouls hovering in churchyards, the 'dead undead' or revenants who slept in their coffins by day and terrorized remote villages by night.

A century and a half before Stoker wrote Dracula, vampire outbreaks hit a bewildered Europe, centring inexorably on Transylvania, the 'land beyond the forest', the undead's natural home. Beyond the forests, in the 'horseshoe of the Carpathians', once lived the original of Stoker's terrible and immortal Count. Vlad ruled Wallachia (today's Romania) three times in the mid-fifteenth century. Outside his tiny state, he was known as Dracula, son of the Dragon, son of the Devil. By his own people, he was called Tepes, the Impaler, after his grisly method of execution. This book looks at Vlad from the many facets he has left to history -- the Impaler; the Renaissance prince 'more sinned against than sinning' whose reputation was destroyed by his enemies; the hero on a white horse, who welded Wallachia into a fighting and defiant nation-state; the defeated martyr, captured by the Hungarian King Corvinus. A stylishly written and compelling narrative, this book unravels the true story behind the image, and takes us into the heart of the bloody, uncertain world of medieval Europe.

Contents:

Map of Europe, c. 1460 vi

Map of Wallachia, Transylvania and Moldavia vii

1 The Gaping Grave 1

2 Interviews with Vampires 13

3 Bram Stoker's Dracula 28

4 Vampyr 45

5 Dracula's People 66

6 'A Wild Bloodthirsty Man ...' 88

7 The Sign of the Dragon 107

8 The Crescent Ascending 126

9 Vlad Voivod 150

10 Enemies of the Cross of Christ 175

11 Impaler Prince 197

12 In the Company of Cain 216

13 Resurrecting Dracula 240

The Draculesti Family Tree 255.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0750929650

OCLC:

51271416