Representing Transylvania and Banat in Vampire Fiction: Speculative and Speculated Geographies in Dracula and Vampirul
Representing Transylvania and Banat in Vampire Fiction: Speculative and Speculated Geographies in Dracula and Vampirul

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the representation of places within Romania in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and Vampirul (1938), the first Romanian vampire novel, by G. M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu. Through a comparative reading, our study introduces the concept of “speculated geography” to describe how the imported Gothic trope of the vampire was locally reconfigured. If Stoker’s portrayal of Transylvania is a form of speculative geography—a fictionalized, exoticized Romanian region shaped by Western bias and second-hand travel accounts—Amza and Bilciurescu’s Vampirul enacts a speculated geography of Banat, a real Romanian region reframed through the authors’ familiarity with the region, the period’s vampire cinema, and the socio-political anxieties of interwar Romania. The article argues that Vampirul reconfigures the imported vampire myth into a local critique of ethnic hierarchies, industrial modernity, and post-imperial nationhood.

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