People Tortured, Cooked, and Impaled: On the Poetics of Collective Horror in Michael Beheim’s Dracula Poem

Abstract

Michael Beheim’s 1463 poem about a villain whose name was Dracula (Voivode of Wallachia) narrates the reign of Vlad III (1428/31–1476/77) up until the year 1462. Not to be mistaken for a historiographical work, the poem focuses on the countless atrocities Dracula commits and the collective suffering he inflicts. This turns his collective victims into the poem’s other protagonist, defined by enduring horror in many gruesome forms. Relying on Eva von Contzen’s concept of collectivity in medieval narratives, this article aims to uncover the poem’s poetics of collective horror that defines and shapes its collective characters. For this, the analysis focuses on how the collective is constructed as a unitary character, how dehumanizing actions shape diverse collectives, and how its list-like character becomes its central poetic strategy. Beheim’s poem develops a narrative strategy of turning the supposedly real experience of horror in his time into a poetry of collectivity.