From Terrifying Villain to Tragic Hero: Miodrag Bulatovid’s Problematic Rehabilitation of the Historical Dracula

The present study analyses the novel Death’s Lover (1990) by  the Yugoslav writer Miodrag Bulatovid. The main character is the controversial figure Vlad Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler, a medieval Romanian prince. The  first part of the study identifies the elements that remain true to the historical chronicle thereby giving the text the character of a documentary. From this point  of view, the novel is a demystifying account of Dracula, the Western European- constructed fictional vampire, and a rehabilitation of the Eastern European historical figure Vlad the Impaler. The second part of the study identifies and analyzes the mechanics and belletristic discursive strategies which appear in the novel, among which are: the frame story structure and framing device; elements   of psychological portraiture; the use of rhetorical figures such as hyperbole, allegory, antithesis; the creation of suspense; the existence of a plot twist; the alternation of first person narration with third person narration; the use of aesthetic and literary mechanisms such as understatement, irony and the grotesque. The result is a work of creative nonfiction that explores and reconstructs history through fictional means. The third part of the study explores the political and ideological motives underlying Bulatovid’s revalorization of Vlad Dracula, a cruel prince obsessed with battling the Ottoman Empire, in the context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the intensification of  nationalist  tendencies and ethnic cleansing.

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