I thoroughly enjoyed this look at multiple interpretations of an iconic story. Excellent job explaining the relevance of gender, sexuality, and othering. Most fascinating for me is learning about the Irish perspective, and I doubt most people today are aware of Stoker’s origins. Fantastic video - thank you!

I don't care if you're overreading or not. I just love it when you dissect narratives. There is so much more beneath the surface that I would often miss without. Such as the importance of Stoker’s origins and therefore the Irish perspective.

Happy Birthday today to Bram Stoker..

I simply LOVED this video. This brings me back to my uni days when we would look at different readings of well known literary works. There is so much you can draw from a novel/novella/poem than just the basic plot. The "Irish" view on the whole stroy was fascinating (and the fact that Mina is "woman"!). We are often just focused on the first layer below the plot that we forget to dig deeper. And if you ever start offering online courses - I'll be the first to sign up... I miss thinking and talking about books in a comp.lit. way :)

Just finished Carmilla and started Dracula today. Can't wait to see you what I get out of it.

Great critique ! Your passion is palpable !

Fantastic video, and here I was thinking I 'got' a lot of the subtext of Dracula! Well, now I know a lot more, and my mental list of cues to keep in mind when reading something, grows ever longer :) Thanks!

Fantastic video (as always!) I've always read Dracula coming for Mina as a result (a sort of punishment) for Mina trying to "overreach" and ask to hunt Dracula alongside the male characters, breaking gender norms somewhat like Lucy. But ironically, it's precisely because they didn't let her go with them, saying it was not a place for women, that she stayed at home alone (and very upset) and became vulnerable. Anyway, excellent video, I learned a lot from it, especially regarding the Irish take.

Fantastic lecture! Welcome to Canavan College. Thank you AP!

Great analysis! I could see how much you enjoyed decoding the novel in your eyes and the grins

It's always fascinating diving deeper into this stuff - you've talked briefly about Dracula and the Irish perspective before, but this was well worth a separate video. Will have fun rereading the book with this mind! Thanks 😊

Hi AP. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of Stoker's outsider status as Irish in England. It is a reading I had never considered before. You have inspired me to to pick the novel up again and look at it from a different angle. Thanks for this. Have a great day.

I love these discussions! I want to read Dracula, but I consistently put it off for more modern things, haha!

31:12 You nearly avoided it, but not quite. The Librarian won’t be happy! Better have some bananas ready for an apology.

Oh AP! Two days ago I had to choose between Dracula and Frankenstein for my next book, and I chose Frankenstein! I'll save your video for later this year once I've read Stoker's book.

This is next level dissection. I wonder how can an avegrage reader extract such information by re-reading books? An I suppose not every book has profound meanings, some are just straight forward stories. I get a lot of value from listening to your opinions, thank you! Hope you get some satisfaction from these pleased masses in the comments 😀

An entertaining and informative video as always AP.

Excellent. I enjoyed this very much especially because I just finished reading Dracula this month. I wish you were my professor growing up or teaching courses over here in the states. But, I am grateful for the next best thing and it is this channel.

Thanks so much for this wonderful video! I liked getting the Victorian England context, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that the Irish context is what really drew me in. I think the first, and only, time I read Dracula was 25+yrs ago, and I largely considered it in relation to the AD&D version of vampires. I think I knew Stoker was Irish at that point, but my interest in Irish history was still new, shallow, and a bit constrained by being a teenager with little spending money. I knew my great grandparents left Ireland around the revolutionary period, I knew about the Famine, the Troubles were still in the papers (even in America), and the forthcoming Michael Collins movie had also inspired me to read some books from that era. All of which is to say that I knew nothing, nevermind how Stoker's nationality might have informed his writing of Dracula. I've come to know a bit more in the intervening years, so when you first mentioned reading Dracula from an Anglo-Irish perspective, I thought about Abhartach and then considered what Stoker's experience of the immediate aftermath of the Famine might have been like, and how that might have influenced him. Needless to say, you brought up a lot more than I thought about. It's a small part, but even casting Mina as mna and then connecting her full name to William of Orange is really interesting. I really enjoyed the connection you make about Dracula personifying both the 'beastly' Irish and the 'bloodsucking' British Empire. For good and ill, that really is the case, isn't it? Whether through occupation, countless Irishmen serving in the British armed forces, or countless more leaving Ireland due to varying circumstances, you could certainly argue that the British Empire did drain the lifeblood of Ireland. I also had to reconsider when Dracula was released. As you point out, the last few decades of the 19th century was a kettle waiting to boil over as far as Irish-English relations went, what with the numerous iterations of Home Rule, Parnell and the Land League, and the rise of the IRB/Fenians. It only makes sense that some of those tensions may have made their way into his writing, but I never made that connection. I wonder if they show up in any of Stoker's other works? I think a final interesting note about Stoker, and something I didn't know until after watching your video, is that he was Protestant. While a simplistic view of part of the tensions present in modern Irish history is to look at it as Catholics vs Protestants, I think it's important to acknowledge that it's much more complicated than that. As ever, people hold many complex and even contradictory social and political views. Case in point, Stoker is said to have been an advocate for Home Rule, but still believed Ireland should remain a part of the British Empire. Anyway, thanks for sharing your insights in another interesting video. Sorry for 2 lengthy/rambly comments in as many days, on 2 different videos One last thing: I never, in a million years, thought I'd see taking the soup linked to Dracula!

What a coincidence, AP. I just bought Dracula but didn't add it ony Nov tbr. I am for sure reading it in December..love your videos.Keep 'em coming. 💜😊

The author might be dead but doesn't mean we can't read the obituary. Haven't read Dracula but I think I have a copy around here somewhere... But it is interesting to hear about authors hiding in plain sight societal commentary in a horror story or other 'less serious' medium.

I love watching these. Makes me feel like I’m attending a university lecture at almost 41 years old. Early 20s me did not finish college because, well, I was a dumb young man. Older, much more “mature” me appreciates this kind of stuff so much.

Oh I can't wait to watch this later! And thanks so much for including the Anglo-Irish aspect, I'll definitely be looking into the people you mentioned in the description

As a Bram from "the birthplace of Willem van Oranje", I approve.

Sounds interesting! But I was planning to read Dracula next month. I'll skip the video, take some notes while I read and watch it after that

Nice! Next week LeFanu's Carmilla?

Interesting, the language thing is very interesting. A few times I`ve spoken spanish in the USA I`ve gotten the "we speak english here, not mexican". Sadly, I could not take their jobs and women. I guess experiances like this apply to the universality of great literature and Dracula in this example. Great stuff AP, keep it up. Any chances we get Carmila by Le Fanu?

Me: AP is Irish and pale and male and just wants to suck our brains... AP: slurp, slurp Me: *drools on shirt* AP: Bat! *flutter*