Are You Sure He Meant That?

There have been numerous times over my teaching career that I have heard the same question over and over again. "Since the author is dead, how do we know that he really meant that?" This is a legitimate question, especially when we study authors that have been dead for hundreds of years. Fortunately you are lucky enough to live in a time when we have records of interviews given by authors and if we are lucky  they hold on to their rough drafts for future generations to study. This is the case with Dracula. Bram Stoker kept copious notes while writing Dracula, which he did not throw away.  The manuscript was lost for about a hundred years, but when it was found, it was a gold mine. We found out that he did a lot of research before he started the book, and that he made many revisions before publishing. We can look at this work and see exactly what he meant through his own notes and the research that he did. We find out that Dracula was not the original name he wanted to give to his vampire. He was originally going to call him Count Vampyr; however, when he was researching the legends of vampires he found out that the word Dracula meant devil. He liked this much better and changed his characters name. For once, we can safely say that "he did mean that" because we have his notes.