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The Critics’ Count: Revisions of Dracula and the Postcolonial Irish Gothic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2014

Calvin W. Keogh
Calvin W. Keogh*
Affiliation:
Central European University
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Abstract

This article revisits Irish criticism of the foundational period of postcolonial studies in view of its relevance to the topic of revisionism in contemporary postcolonial theory. Situating the status of Ireland and its literature in postcolonial studies, it suggests that the early distinction between academic “rereading” and creative “writing back” is a false one and that developments in Irish studies in the 1980s anticipate the more nuanced brands of contemporary postcolonialism. As a case in point, the article considers critical revisions of Irish Gothic fiction, which provided a context for various revisions conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s of the novel Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker (1847–1912). It focuses on the “metrocolonial” concept introduced by Joseph Valente, which offers a means not only of connecting these revisions but of specifying the postcolonial status of Ireland and of relating revisionism to the revolutionary and reconciliatory strands of contemporary postcolonial theory.

Keywords

DraculaIrish GothicIrish studiesmetrocolonialmodernismpostcolonialismpostmodernismreconciliationrevisionismrevolution
Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , September 2014 , pp. 189 - 206
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2014 

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Footnotes

Calvin W. Keogh attained a BA in English from University College, Dublin; an MA in English Language and Culture from Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam; and an advanced MA in Literary Studies from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. He is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Gender Studies at the Central European University, Budapest.

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