The Vampire as Trickster Figure in Bram Stoker’s Dracula BETH E. MCDONALD = The inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula has long been a subject of literary speculation. Much has been written over the past twenty years, covering a wide range of interpretations from psychological to historical, detailing and hypothesizing about Stoker's research and his use of real- life and folkiore models for the character of Dracula. It is clear from several of these sources that Bram Stoker made use of the history of the fifteenth-century Wallachian prince, Viad Tepes, as a pattern for the history of his vampire, An excellent case has also been made for his use of folklore to build a realistic base for the vampirism and its destruction within the novel.! In the context of many of these interpretations and analyses, more than one writer has indicated that both the story and character of Dracula are of mythic value and, therefore, of lasting appeal to literary audiences of all ages and times, However, prolific and wide-ranging as these various essays are, one area of character analysis has been ignored, or perhaps simply has. gone unnoticed, by the analysts. This view of Dracula’s development involves a psychological approach to the vampire as a “col- lective shadow" and mythic “trickster” figure. Another level of psy- chological interpretation may help to explain the perception of Dracula as mythic, To understand Dracula as a trickster figure, the figure itself must be placed in mythological, literary, and psychological perspectives; the availability of the trickster for Bram Stoker’s appropriation must be established; and the major characteristics inherent in the trickster must be shown to be a part of the characterization within Dracula. The trickster figure is a character existing in man’s earliest myths. He appears to have been “the chief mythological character of the paleolithic world of story” (Campbell, Primitive Mythology 273). The representation Extrapolation, Vol. 33, No. 2, © 1992 by The Kent State University Press Copyright © 2011 ProGuest UC. Al ight rere, Copyigh © Univriy of feos ot Browreile ad Texos Soshmes' Cllge, Doparmant fEaglth,