The Image of Vlad III Basarab in German Sources of the 15th-16th Centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the emergence of German texts about Dracula in Germany in the 15th-16th centuries and their genre evolution associated with a change in the linguo-pragmatic task. The links between the works about Dracula belonging to different genres are considered: the handwritten pamphlet of the Benedictine monks from Lambach, the historical episode in the “Chronicle of Constance” by Gebhard Daher, the poetic arrangement of “About the villain called Dracula the Voda of Wallachia” by the court poet Michael Beheim, an entertaining story in early printed editions – “folk books”. The article shows how, depending on the historical situation, the evaluative position and goals of the compilers of the texts changed, and what effect this had on specific linguistic features, primarily lexical ones. he works of Antonio Bonfini and Teodor Kurițan do not seem to have influenced the German Dracula narratives: even the later German texts are close in content to the Lambach manuscripts.

Keywords

• vlad iii basarab
• dracula
• dan iii basarab’s letter
• lambach’s benedictine manuscripts
• gebhard daher’s chronicle of constance
• michael behaim’s poem
• mark eirer’s folk books
• pragmatics