Stoker frames Transylvania as both Catholic and Muslim cursed territory.

Evidence

Stoker’s use of this imagery is complicated, and his use of Catholicism is not solely connected to darkness and evil. Catholic religious accoutrements, most notably holy water and the crucifix, are used in the battle against Dracula. At the same time, when Jonathon enters Transylvania—a Catholic and Muslim territory—he encounters a series of medieval Catholic superstitions and images, many of which are quite frightening. In the film, a Transylvanian girl gives Jonathon a cross and warns him, “The dead travel fast.” Shrines from a past era dot the landscape. Wolves and dogs gather around Jonathon as he approaches a castle, where he is greeted by a sculpture of a dragon. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 657

Categorization

• XREF: Directly germane to the reader’s thesis: Dracula’s territory is marked ‘Catholic and Muslim,’ blurring the two in the Western monster-imagination.
• QUESTION: Why does Stoker tag Transylvania as Muslim? Worth checking the source text and scholarship on the historical Ottoman presence in Wallachia and Dracula’s historical model.
• SEED: Article angle: how Dracula—a foundational Western monster—lives on the border of Catholic and Muslim cursedness, making Islam an ingredient in the vampire myth.