Vampire Literature

Children’s literature has predominantly been the domain of the Western vampire of European origins: But how do other cultures, like say the Japanese, approach the vampire legend in their literature for children? What sort of creatures from the natural world become creatures from the supernatural world, in their long body of literature for children and young adults?

Co-edited with David J. Skal.

This Norton Critical Edition includes: 

The first edition of the novel, published by Archibald Constable in London in 1897 and chosen by the editors in order to give readers—insofar as such a thing is possible—a more historically authentic reading experience than has been generally available. Arcane words and usages are footnoted at first appearance. 

Editorial matter by John Edgar Browning and David J. Skal. 

Eight background pieces, five of them new to the Second Edition, on Count Dracula specifically and vampires more generally; seven reviews and reactions to Dracula’s publication, five of them new to the Second Edition; and six selections, two of them new to and two others updated for the Second Edition, on Dracula’s many dramatic and filmic variations. 

Eleven critical essays on Dracula’s central themes, six of them new to the Second Edition. 

A selected bibliography.

According to the Bible, Eve was the first to heed Satan’s advice to eat of the forbidden fruit. The notion of woman as the Devil’s accomplice is prominent throughout the history of Christianity. During the nineteenth century, rebellious females performed counter-readings of this misogynist tradition. Hereby, Lucifer was reconceptualised as a feminist liberator of womankind, and Eve became a heroine. In these reimaginings, Satan is an ally in the struggle against a patriarchy supported by God the Father and his male priests.

This study delineates how such Satanic feminism is expressed in a number of nineteenth-century esoteric works, literary texts, autobiographies, pamphlets and journals, newspaper articles, paintings, sculptures and even artefacts of consumer culture such as jewellery.

In the material, four motifs in particular are prominent: 1) interpretations of Eve’s role in the fall of man as something positive, 2) the witch as a proto-feminist figure, 3) the demon lover as an emancipator, 4) a feminised Satan contrasted with an oppressive male God. A fifth and less central motif is conceptions of Lilith, according to Jewish lore the unruly first wife of Adam, as the first feminist.

The analysis focuses on interfaces between esotericism and the political realm, as well as the interdependence of literature and the occult. New light is thus shed on neglected aspects of the intellectual history of feminism, Satanism and revisionary mythmaking. The study is informed by theories concerning counter-readings, counter-discourses and counter-myths, and in particular highlights the complex interplay of such phenomena and the hegemonic discourses that demonised feminism. A key theme in this context is the limits and paradoxes of inversion as a subversive strategy.

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A detailed discussion is presented highlighting the most common characteristic of the reptilians and their hybrid cohorts. It is elucidated that the negative aliens are highly, violent, warring, separatist, disconnected, narcissistic, selfish, egotistical, psychopathic and sociopathic form of beings with strong proclivity to anger and apathy for others who are utterly void of compassion, empathy, or love or emotions for that matter except anger. They also highly venerate physical strength above anything else and use it effectively to wage wars against others, conquer them and putting them in bondage for free labor. Being energetically parasitic-vampiric, not being able to sustain themselves against inevitable self-consumption, they use the same motivation and disposition with utter cunningness and deceptiveness in search of the conquest of solar organic sentient consciousness beings in order to siphon, harvest, and prey upon their energies as a food source in which they feel they need to keep them in a state of unconsciousness enslavement so they do not know what is happening to them. Being void of solar organic consciousness and unable to consciously vibrate, they are often very afraid of solar light or sunshine. They are soulless and void of any organic consciousness embodiment and are non-sentient beings unable to 'sense' the progression of time whatsoever. Thus, evolution is not a factor in their question of artificial existence nor is multidimensionality living multiple lives at the same time, being robots, cyborgs, automatons, and a form of dead energy. They exist as automatons surviving within a hive organization or society and they strictly adhere to a pyramidal hierarchical structure in which those deemed as stronger and superiors reside on progressively the higher pyramidal scale. They are also a highly envious, greedy, avaricious group of beings who perceive themselves as superior to others and entitled to pillage and plunder others' belongings and energetic resources including their consciousness energies upon which they are dependent to survive. This has made them essentially a glutinous lustful group of beings also prone to sloth, reaping the benefit of hard labor of the others. Also being such narcissists, self-supremacists, and elitists, they have digressed to believe in racial and other forms of prejudices including the repugnant dogma of eugenics. Finally, a most distasteful trait that they are associated with is that of delusional sense of male-supremacy giving rise to a patriarchal domination dogma of existence as well as misogyny, viewing the female as weak and "worthless" unlike their males as the epitome of physical strength, forever in search of hunting-gathering, war and conquest, as a means for distinction and veneration.

The article explores the metamorphosis of a vampire figure in the beginning of the 19th century, when it evolved from a mindless walking corpse, well-known from Slavic folklore, into a deadly dangerous seducer of aristocratic backgrounds. The thorough interpretation of "Le Vampire" by Charles Nodier, staged for the first time in Paris in 1820, uncovers a strong relation between the hegemony of melodrama in the 19th-century theatre and the vampire fever, which expanded from France to other European countries.

This paper analyses Eiko Ishioka’s Orientalisation of Dracula for Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 masterwork. It questions, particularly, the position of Eiko as a Japanese fashion designer and contentions of Orientalism in regard to Dorinne Kondo’s (1997) statement that 'for Japanese designers… what counts as Japanese is always a problematic issue' (p. 56).

The framework for this investigation is Bram Stoker’s novel itself, and a comparative reading of Dracula’s character in connection with his 'Oriental' origins, in context with Victorian anxieties about colonisation and disease. In relation to Said’s theories on Orientalism, especially in terms of the 'coloniser' and the 'colonised', this study also explores the relationship between Orientalisation and feminisation and examines Dracula as the feminine 'Other'. A further extension is the position of women in fin-de-siècle society, the women’s rights movement, and how fears regarding Woman and the femme-fatale are intertextualised with these notions, reflected in both the novel and the film.

Reference

Kondo, D. (1997), About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater, New York and London: Routledge.

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On the eve of the centenary of Stoker’s death, which occurred in April 1912, the University of Hull’s Department of English and School of Arts and New Media, in association with the Centre for Victorian Studies, hosted a three-day international conference, Bram Stoker and Gothic Transformations.The conference was interested in the iconic significance of Stoker’s vampire novel and sought to reappraise Stoker’s work within its fin-de-siècle cultural climate. It was also interested in exploring the broader context of the changing nature of Gothic productions from the late-eighteenth century to the present. Using Dracula as a key point in the evolution of the genre, it sought to explore the novel’s Gothic predecessors and influences, and the manner in which Stoker’s work renewed the Gothic for future generations.

Seria "Perspektywy Ponowoczesności" (t. VII): "Groza i postgroza"

Świat stworzony przez Anne Rice jest jednym z najdokładniej opisanych i najbardziej interesujących  wampirzych uniwersów. Wykreowana przez autorkę przestrzeń nie emanuje grozą wprost, lecz w subtelny, nieraz zawoalowany sposób przedstawia imaginarium nowoorleańskiej pisarki, wzbudzając jednocześnie lęk i fascynację. Nagromadzenie elementów piękna spotyka się tutaj z opisami krwawych uczt wampirów, makabry ich dekapitacji, pełnego poczucia rozpaczy i samotności. Prezentacja trojga głównych bohaterów o skomplikowanej psychice wzbudza empatię – czytelnik zaczyna współczuć nieumarłym, rozumie ich, przenosi sympatię ze śmiertelników (po których stronie znajduje się zwykle odbiorca) na istoty, których powinien się obawiać.

SUMMARY: Broken into three focuses, I explore the history of the way we label vampires or striga, the earliest written variants, the historically written accounts of vampires, and the earlier fictional works of vampires. Please feel free to share the online published articles found at the links below: PART 1 The Oldest Tales: http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/the-evolution-of-vampires-oldest-tales/ PART 2 Historical Accounts: http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/the-evolution-of-vampires-historical-accounts/ PART 3 Early Fictional Work: http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/evolution-of-vampires-the-earliest-fiction/ FULL ARTICLE: Vampires. We see them on television, in books, featured in artwork, and during Halloween, we love to dress up as one. Where does it all come from? What defines the vampire we see today versus the one our ancestors whispered about during those dark nights by the fire? There may not be any clear answer to this, no straight path to point to, but you will find many examples all over the world, including Hindu, Romanian, Greek, Japanese, and even Native American Lore. It dives deeper than Bram Stoker's Dracula and older than Vlad the Impaler. Let's take it back, to those first inklings and work our way to the familiar veins, shall we? Much of this research is part of a ten plus yearlong development for my Dark Fantasy Paranormal Romance, The Cedric Series, so let's take a swim together. This is a multi-part series, be sure to check back for the next installments often. What Defines A Vampire Before we go down the blackhole of historical links and accounts, let's take a moment to discuss what makes a thing a vampire? In today's world, it falls back to drinking blood and unable to be in the sunlight, but as we crawl further back, this becomes less apparent. Instead, many of the early versions of " vampires " or similar creatures begin to straddle both as the walking dead or a witch featuring abilities of all kinds. Shapeshifting, flying, melting into shadows, possession and other elements have been included long before the more practical blood drinkers. Many of these early editions served as people eaters and life suckers rather than the common blood eating sort we know and love. In honor of the early formats:

Prologue of the collective book of short stories «Thirteen times Sarah» (Lima, Ediciones Altazor, 2017; participating writers: John R. Ancka, Jorge Casilla, Daniel Collazos, Irma del Águila, Alejandra P. Demarini, Carlos Freyre, José Luis Guardia, Isabel Sabogal, Jesús Salcedo, Moisés Sánchez Franco, Juan Carlos Townsend, Pedro Ugarte Valdivia y Jorge Ureta)

Collected in the latest issue of Minchō Magazine, this is an article on the work of the French-Jewish comic-book author and filmdirector, Joann Sfar. The complete issue is dedicated to monsters and their depiction in the world of arts, especially in the field of illustration. The article presents an overview on the humane universe that Joan Sfar has created for his own monsters to dwell. The magazine can be found here: http://minchomag.com/issue-13/

The vampire apocalypse is a fairly unlikely event, but it makes for great storytelling. Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend is a milestone in modern Gothic literature; it tells the bleak story of Robert Neville, sole survivor of a vampire plague. I employ the concepts of evolved human nature, cultural ecology, and authorial identity as my main analytical tools for understanding the appeal, the power, and the significance of Matheson's classic novel, which is basically an extrapolation on peculiar yet common anxieties and a meditation on what happens when basic adaptive needs are frustrated.

""This collection of interconnected essays relates the Undead in literature, art and other media to questions concerning gender, race, genre, technology, consumption and social change. A coherent narrative follows Enlightenment studies of the vampire’s origins in folklore and folk panics, the sources of vampire fiction, through Romantic incarnations in Byron and Polidori to Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Further essays discuss the Undead in the context of Dracula, fin-de-siècle decadence, Nazi Germany and early cinematic treatments. The rise of the sympathetic vampire is charted from Coppola’s film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight. More recent manifestations in novels, TV, Goth subculture, young adult fiction and cinema are dealt with in discussions of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and much more. Featuring distinguished contributors, including a prominent novelist, and aimed at interdisciplinary scholars or postgraduate students, it will also appeal to aficionados of creative writing and Undead enthusiasts.""

ADAM MICKIEWICZ THE ROMANTIC OR A VISION IN BROAD DAYLIGHT... VAMPIRE
This article aims to propose a new thesis interpretation on The Romantic of Adam Mickiewicz, under which the beloved Karusia – Jasieniek is a phantom, Polish vampire, not the spirit. Phantom the most as Slavic because such a folklore and folk refers author of The Forefathers. In previous studies and interpretations ballad little space was devoted figure Jasienka. Beloved girl is the spirit, or ghost. When looking at the dead lover Karusia through the prism of criticism phantasm Maria Janion, with particular regard to the opening of the Romantics to the of dialogue with the dead, a fascination with phantoms and Slavs Mickiewicz and autographs of the last stanzas The Romantic must submit a new paradigm of interpretation.

Esiste un Gotico autoctono nell'Italia del diciannovesimo secolo, una rielaborazione locale di forme e modelli inglesi - un Gotico "sotto il sole", per così dire? Nel suo breve saggio Francesca Saggini affronta questo argomento molto dibattuto facendo valere la presenza di chiari motivi e strutture gotici in diversi romanzi italiani, da I promessi sposi di Alessandro Manzoni (1827), a Le avventure di Pinocchio (1883) di Carlo Lorenzini (Collodi). Il percorso del Gotico italiano si chiude con i discorsi antirazionalisti e antiscientifici fioriti alla fine del secolo e modalità ermeneutiche come lo spiritismo, il mesmerismo e l'occultismo, sempre più di moda nella stampa popolare. Il saggio include una disamina del tutto inedita sui vampiri italiani dell’Ottocento, che non smisero mai di affiorare anche all’ombra del nostro sole nero.

An unapologetically “against the grain" reading of "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer and the subsequent film adaptation that explores the inadvertent queer resonances embedded within the film. Topics covered include  the queer origins of the vampire figure, the "cult of beauty" tradition, the "sad young man" trope, the ambiguous star-text of Robert Pattinson, and gay male spectatorship.

Índice Portada Sinopsis Portadilla Dedicatoria 0. Si no vives al límite, estás ocupando demasiado espacio 1. Aterrizar no es más que lanzarte al suelo con la esperanza de no fallar 2. Vivir en una torre no te convierte en un príncipe 3. Las reinas vampiro no son las únicas que tienen una mordedura dolorosa 4. Los príncipes azules son tan del siglo pasado… 5. Cosas que el rosa eléctrico y Harry Styles tienen en común 6. No, de verdad que no quiero hacer un muñeco de nieve 7. Algo muy perverso viene hacia aquí 8. Vive y deja morir 9. Incluso el infierno tiene sus pandillas 10. Resulta que el diablo viste de Gucci 11. En la biblioteca nadie oirá tus gritos

Anne Rice's twelve vampire “autobiographies” continue to be hugely influential for vampire fiction and other artifacts of popular culture. This article explores two tropes which structure and enable the vampire communities throughout the twelve texts. Both are crucially gifts: the “Dark Gift” of blood to be swallowed, and the gift of autobiography to be shared. Anthropological gift theory is a fruitful tool for analyzing the way exchange functions in Rice’s texts, as well as in the vast array of texts influenced by her vampire chronicles. Rice’s vampire community is forged by complex exchanges of blood and words, joining mouths that swallow and mouths that speak.

Cid Vale Ferreira (2002) afirma que o vampiro é o fruto bastardo da mescla incestuosa de Amor e Morte. Nesse sentido, encontramos no romance em forma de poema “Octavio e Branca ou a maldicção materna”, de João Cardoso de Menezes e Souza, um exemplar dessa união. João Cardoso (1827-1915) apresenta uma tônica gótica em suas obras e um timbre tétrico que repercute na dicção de Álvares de Azevedo entre outros. É um dos poucos poetas brasileiros do Romantismo a trabalhar o tema do vampirismo em voga na então produção artística europeia. Seu poema “Octavio e Branca ou a maldicção materna” é, provavelmente, a primeira obra sobre vampiros da literatura brasileira. Assim, propomos um estudo da figura vampírica no poema, no sentido de compreender, por meio da hermenêutica simbólica, como esse personagem mitológico se torna filho das divindades Amor e Morte, apoiando-nos em teóricos que se detiveram no estudo do vampiro.

This text examines the uses, symbolic meanings, and social roles of ghosts, vampires, and zombies in literature, film, and other forms of public representation. Special attention is given to the manifold ways in which the past is commemorated differently in different places and situations. The first part of the text examines various approaches to undead monsters as part of people’s concerns with a past that seems to “haunt” the present. The second part looks at the distinct features of these monsters’ imagined bodies, with particular attention to vampires and zombies, and considers their value as frameworks for the study of individual and social remembering.

In Christabel Coleridge attempts, consciously or subconsciously, to derive inspiration from the numinous narratives of the past and from the revolutionary transgression of the present. The poem’s references to medieval romance both celebrates and critiques English heritage and its cultural institutions, and simultaneously weaves in pagan and folkloric elements that harken back to the pre-Roman druidic culture to inject mysterious and supernatural elements into the work. Concurrent with this historic homage Coleridge sought to infuse transgressive inversions of class, gender roles, sexuality, and political order to participate in the revolutionary zeitgeist of his day. The vampire figure with its blend of archaic mysticism and subversive defiance provided a vehicle for his aesthetic experimentation, and Coleridge inadvertently created a proto-vampire poem that inspired nineteenth century gothic and vampire narratives. However, the very transgressive energy of revolutionary upheaval that Coleridge found inspiring betrayed him and ultimately stifled his creative production. This aesthetic muzzling and Coleridge’s recognition of it contributes to his inability to bring Christabel to completion, and even explains the precipitous decline in both quality and creative energy from Part I to Part II of the existing manuscript. Coleridge provides a crucial early example of the creative potency inherent in tales of vampiric transgression that resonated throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, though his incapacity to reconcile transgressive energy with archaic mysticism illustrates the anxiety involved in fin-de-siècle narratives, an anxiety incidentally that is as much part of the heritage of vampire novels as the vampire itself.

This dissertation investigates how the issues of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are discussed in the novel 'Fledgling' (2006) by Octavia Butler, in the novel 'Brown Girl in the Ring' (1998) and in the short story 'Greedy Choke Puppy' (2001) by Nalo Hopkinson, and in the novel 'The Living Blood' (2001) by Tananarive Due. These works are examples of speculative fiction, an umbrella genre that encompasses others such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the gothic, and that comments on social constructions and current society by creating alternative beings and ways of life. Written by black women in in the United States and Canada at the end of the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, the works analyzed here show that race, ethnicity, and sexuality are common concerns for the three writers. This is so because these issues, which are constructed by social and cultural discourses that often result in discrimination and marginalization, are interconnected, especially in the lives and identities of black women. This investigation also analyzes how Butler, Hopkinson, and Due use the symbolism of blood in their speculative representations of race, ethnicity, and sexuality. More specifically, the reference to blood in their works often points to racial and sexual abjection, to the black ancestry, the family line, and the ethnic bonds of the protagonists, as well as to a transgressive sexuality and a possibility of nurturance, providing specific discussions about race, ethnicity, and sexuality from the perspective of black women in a contemporary context. Their works imagine a world in which the black race, the ethnicities of African origin, female sexuality, and maternity have a fundamental role for the future of humanity, contradicting, therefore, age-old and prejudiced racist and sexist discourses.

From amazon.com:
""Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time.

Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda.

In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again.

Ulrich Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading."

Coleridge’s religious views changed all through his lonesome life. Despite his reconversion to Anglicanism after an active membership amongst the Unitarians and the Socinians, he was constantly troubled by the thought of the inexplicable entrance of evil in one’s existence and by a piercing sense of guilt for his sins. He sought to find God’s forgiveness and feel His love. Coleridge imbued with such feelings the title characters of some of his works, for instance The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere and Christabel. In both cases no chance is given them to repent of their transgressions. They are denied God’s grace, and are led to the point of no return. Christabel is the story of innocence and purity violated by sin. In a setting of ambiguity, if not disorder, Geraldine twists Christabel’s simplicity and inexperience, offering false protection. Such apparent truths beguile Christabel and introduce her to carnality. Geraldine’s spell brings spiritual destruction and never-ending misery on Christabel and her father, Sir Leoline. Christabel mirrors Coleridge’s views on the doctrine of the Fall. The story itself, the Bible and the author’s consideration of John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a literary mediator are merely a pretext for him to express his theological concerns and spiritual anxieties while giving vent to his heavy-laden vocation as a poet.

Rumours about vampire epidemics in Eastern Europe reached the west throughout the 18th century. Discussions on revenants en corps brought up complex theological questions, which had long divided Catholics and Protestants. Th ese included the nature of ghosts and the possible role played by the Devil. Additionally, vampires, similarly to Catholic saints, seemed not to be subject to putrefaction. Giuseppe Davanzati, Archbishop of Trani, in the Kingdom of Naples, decided to write a dissertation in which, with the help of theological and natural-philosophical arguments, he set forth the Catholic point of view on the issue.

The article analyses two recent fictional reiterations of Count Dracula’s topos – namely, Alucard
in Kouta Hirano’s Hellsing manga series (1997-2008) and Fifi/FAD (Florin Anghelescu Dragolea) in Alexandru
Muşina’s novel Dracula’s Nephew (2012) – as two rather authoritative contemporary references modifying the
vampiric epitome originally outlined by Bram Stoker (and others). The focus is set on the evolution of ‘nation
branding’ related elements reflected inside the common fictional paradigm. More specifically, this imagological
investigation revolves around the ethical-symbolic dimension of the two selected contemporary works, in its
particular relation to the controversial tendency of ‘branding’ Romania (or Transylvania) as the ‘actual’ homeland
of the vicious vampire count. The ethical response both works imply is distinctive as well as significant, in the sense
that it illustrates a current tendency towards what will be referred to in the present study as a ‘pop-cultural
détente’.