Sociopolitical Philosophy In The Works Of Stoker And Yeats Essay

Sociopolitical Philosophy in the Works of Stoker and Yeats   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Around the turn of this century there was widespread fear throughout Europe, and especially Ireland, of the consequences of the race mixing that was occurring and the rise of the lower classes over the aristocracies in control. In Ireland, the Protestants who were in control of the country began to fear the rise of the Catholics, which threatened their land and political power. Two Irish authors of the period, Bram Stoker and William Butler Yeats, offer their views on this â€Å"problem† in their works of fiction. These include Stoker's Dracula and Yeats' On Baile's Strand and The Only Jealousy of Emer, and these works show the authors' differences in ideas on how to deal with this threat to civilization. Stoker feels that triumph over this threat can only be achieved by the defeat of these â€Å"demonic† forces through modernity, while Yeats believes that only by facing the violent and demonic forces and emerging from them could Ireland return to its ancient and traditional roots and find its place in society.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The vampire was a common metaphor used by many authors in an attempt to portray the rising lower class and foreign influence as evil and harmful to modern civilization. The Irish Protestant author Sheridan Le Fanu uses vampires to represent the Catholic uprising in Ireland in his story Carmilla. Like much of gothic fiction, Carmilla is about the mixing of blood and the harm that results from it. When vampires strike, they are tainting the blood of the pure and innocent, causing them to degenerate into undead savages who will take over and colonize until their race makes up the condition of the whole world. This was the fear the Protestants had of the rising Catholic class. They were seen as a lowly people and the fear was that they too would colonize and degenerate Ireland, and perhaps the rest of Europe, back into a primitive land of savages. This fear of the breakdown of civilization by dark forces is also what Dracula is about.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In Dracula, Stoker sets up the heroes and victors of the novel as civilized people, while the foreign villain is ancient and demonic. The book begins with the journal of Jonathan Harker, a stenographer from London who is sent to Transylvania to close a land deal with the mysterious Cou... ...rk forces that threaten it, and removing itself from these forces, in addition to simply delaying the inevitable, will only lead to further tragedy.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The works of these two Irish authors are fine pieces of fiction that effectively employ the elements of horror and tragedy which are common in gothic literature, but they also serve as valuable insights into the philosophies that were shared by many Europeans during these times of anxiety and change. It is difficult to say which philosophy is superior to the other. Stoker's Dracula   was published in 1897, while Yeats' works were written later, with The Only Jealousy of Emer  written in 1919, giving him the advantage of witnessing the Easter Rising of 1916. The turmoil of the period was not as simple as modern versus primitive or good versus evil, and certainly not everyone in Europe shared their views or anything close to them, thus making it virtually impossible to judge the superiority of one philosophy over another. While readers may not agree with either of the authors, these works are still entertaining and serve as a testament to the power of literature as a platform for social and political opinion.