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[from Bite Me issue 6 (Glasgow, Scotland), 2001, pp. 12-13]

Dr. Elizabeth Miller, Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland, is an internationally renowned expert on Dracula. She has published four books and dozens of articles on the subject, including the controversial Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000). President of the Canadian Chapter of the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, she has been interviewed extensively by various media around the world, and has lectured in Canada, the United States, Ireland, Germany, Poland and Romania.

Bite Me: What inspired you to write your book Dracula: Sense & Nonsense?

Elizabeth Miller: Since I began working on Dracula as a literary scholar, I have become increasingly alarmed at how many misconceptions and inaccuracies have appeared in print (and on television documentaries) about Bram Stoker and his famous novel. I wish to stress that I have no problem with speculation--indeed, without it, few advances in scholarship would occur. But I do feel an obligation to challenge speculation that is presented to us as fact. That there as been such proliferation of questionable 'scholarship' and downright errors indicates to me a cavalier attitude towards Dracula, coupled with a greater interest in sensationalism than in accuracy. Dracula: Sense & Nonsense was written to set, where possible, the record straight.

Bite Me: Do you ever feel you are ruining the fantasy for millions of people over the world?

Elizabeth Miller: To begin with, I doubt if millions will read my book! But my answer is a resounding NO. The novel is a fantasy. The people who are ruining the fantasy are those who insist that everything in the novel had to be based on someone or something. Bram Stoker was a novelist--the book is a work of fiction, and a wonderful one at that. Why does Count Dracula have to be based on anyone? Why does there have to be a model for Castle Dracula? We are dealing with creations of a writer's imagination. However, there are things about Stoker and the writing of the novel that we do know, thanks in part to the existence of his working notes for the book (which I have examined) and, of course, the text itself. It is the obligation of scholars to separate the facts about the author and his book from the preponderance of fabrication with which we have been bombarded.

Nowhere in my book do I challenge interpretations of the novel, unless these use unsubstantiated 'facts' as proof. And I certainly would not want to deprive anyone of the pleasure of watching a Dracula movie or reading a new adaptation of the Dracula legend. In fiction (be it a novel or a film), anything goes. But non-fiction is a different matter. The factual errors raise my blood pressure!

Bite Me: What singular misconception would you like to change most?

Elizabeth Miller: Oh, that's easy. All of the nonsense about the so-called 'connection' between Count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. I devote a full section (close to 50 pages) to that in the book. Never has so much been written by so many about so little. Outrageous claims range from statements that Stoker based his castle Dracula on a fortress built by Vlad in Wallachia to the 'fact' that Stoker's use of wooden stakes as a means of destroying vampires was based on his knowledge that the historical Dracula impaled his foes on stakes. According to existing evidence, Stoker knew very little about Vlad (he most likely did not even know his name was Vlad, nor is there any evidence that he knew about Vlad's atrocities). He stumbled across the name 'Dracula' in a couple of paragraphs in an obscure book at the Whitby Public Library. He liked the name, and appropriated it for his already created vampire character. No proof has been found that he knew any more about the historical figure than a few scraps of information found in the book in Whitby (the he was a Wallachian voivode who crossed the Danube, fought the Turks, and was ultimately defeated and replaced). Given the paucity of evidence, how can we say that Vlad the Impaler was the inspiration of the novel?

Bite Me: What are your views on vampires? Do they exist?

Elizabeth Miller: That depends on your definition of 'vampire'. If you mean a revenant who returns from the grave to feed on the blood of the living, or a supernatural being who lives forever on blood, then my answer is no. There are, however, people who for one reason or another (ranging from psychiatric obsession to a matter of choice) drink human blood; maybe one can call these people 'vampires', using a very loose definition. And of course, there are vampire bats (but not in Transylvania, as some writers have claimed).

Bite Me: What aspect of vampirism interests you the most?

Elizabeth Miller: The novel Dracula. It fascinates me. I have read it many times, and have read just about everything that's been written about it. I am especially interested in the genesis of the novel, as well as how it has permeated our culture since its first appearance in 1897.

Bite Me: Any research you have found about Scotland?

Elizabeth Miller: Only bits and pieces about the Cruden Bay connection (dealt with later). I know of no vampires in Scottish folklore. But then, I am not a folklorist and have not investigated that aspect of the subject.

Bite Me: How did you first become interested in vampires?

Elizabeth Miller: You can blame it on Lord Byron! About ten years ago, I was looking for a new field of scholarly research and decided to go back to the subject of my M.A. thesis, the poetry of Lord Byron. It was then that it struck me that the first vampire fiction in English literature was written by Byron's personal physician, John Polidori (a graduate of Edinburgh University). That led me quite naturally to Dracula--and I was hooked!

Bite Me: What have been the highlights of your Dracula studies?

Elizabeth Miller: That's a difficult one. There have been so many. Certainly one highlight occurred in 1995 when the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in Romania conferred upon me the honourary title 'Baroness of the House of Dracula'. Other exciting moments include reading a paper on Dracula at the Romanian Embassy in Washington D.C.; being interviewed for a TV documentary by the Learning Channel (U.S.) For their "Great Books: Dracula"; the launch of Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (actually my third book on Dracula) in Romania last year; and attending as guest lecturer the world premiere of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's 'Dracula'.

Bite Me: In the UK at present there is debate over the location of the model of inspiration for Dracula's--castle between Whitby and Cruden Bay. Which one would you say it was? Or is it neither?

Elizabeth Miller: Neither. There is no doubt that Bram Stoker spent time in both places while he was working on Dracula. The influence of Whitby on the novel is clear: three chapters are set there; Stoker's Notes for the novel (located at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia) contain several pages of material about the town; and it was in Whitby that he found the name 'Dracula'. Cruden Bay (including Slains Castle) is not mentioned in either the Notes or the novel. Some have suggested that Slains is the model for Dracula's Castle. I do not accept that. In my view, Castle Dracula exists in only one place--the pages of Stoker's novel. He knew what castles looked like; he was certainly aware of the conventional castle of earlier Gothic fiction. He hardly needed a model.

Bite Me: What are you working on now?

Elizabeth Miller: Actually, my fourth book on the subject is just out. Entitled Dracula, it is an elaborate coffee-table art book with over 130 illustrations covering the whole range of Dracula/vampires. I have also recently completed A Dracula Handbook, an in-house publication of the Canadian Chapter, Transylvanian Society of Dracula. I am also working on a couple of scholarly articles, and I keep active as editor of the Journal of Dracula Studies.

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