Since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires.
A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse draugr, an “undead” creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula.
In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions.
The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire’s beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.
Author(s): Barbara Brodman, James E. Doan (eds)
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 262
City: Madison - Teaneck
Tags: Cultural Studies, vampirism, medievalism, literary studies, superstition, folklore, mythology, pagan beliefs, film studies, movie criticism, vampiric literature
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan
Part I: The Western Vampire: From Draugr to Dracula
Chapter 1: “Draugula”: The Draugr in Old Norse-Icelandic Saga Literature and His Relationship to the Post-Medieval Vampire Myth
Matthias Teichert
Chapter 2: Dracula Anticipated: The “Undead” in Anglo-Irish Literature
Paul E. H. Davis
Chapter 3: Retracing the Shambling Steps of the Undead: The Blended Folkloric Elements of Vampirism in Bram Stoker’s "Dracula"
Alexis M. Milmine
Chapter 4: Dracula’s Kitchen: A Glossary of Transylvanian Cuisine, Language, and Ethnography
Cristina Artenie
Part II: Medical Explanations for the Vampire
Chapter 5: Biomedical Origins of Vampirism
Edward O. Keith
Chapter 6: Evidence for the Undead: The Role of Medical Investigation in the 18th-Century Vampire Epidemic
Leo Ruickbie
Chapter 7: Undead Feedback: Adaptations and Echoes of Johann Flückinger’s Report, "Visum et Repertum" (1732), until the Millennium
Clemens Ruthner
Part III: The Female Vampire in World Myth and the Arts
Chapter 8: Women with Bite: Tracing Vampire Women from Lilith to "Twilight"
Nancy Schumann
Chapter 9: Vampiresse: Embodiment of Sensuality and Erotic Horror in Carl Th. Dreyer’s "Vampyr" and Mario Bava’s "The Mask of Satan"
Angela Tumini
Chapter 10: The Vampire in Native American and Mesoamerican Lore
James E. Doan
Chapter 11: Vampiric Viragoes: Villainizing and Sexualizing Arthurian Women in "Dracula vs. King Arthur (2005)"
Katherine Allocco
Chapter 12: “If I Wasn’t a Girl, Would You Like Me Anyway?” Le Fanu’s "Carmilla" and Alfredson’s "Let the Right One In"
Jamieson Ridenhour
Part IV: Old and New World Manifestations of the Vampire
Chapter 13: A Cultural Dynasty of Beautiful Vampires: Japan’s Acceptance, Modifications, and Adaptations of Vampires
Masaya Shimokusu
Chapter 14: From Russia with Blood: Imagining the Vampire in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture
Thomas Jesús Garza
Chapter 15: Dracula Comes to Mexico: Carlos Fuentes’s "Vlad", Echoes of Origins, and the Return of Colonialism
Adriana Gordillo
Chapter 16: Sublime Horror: Transparency, Melodrama, and the Mise-en-Scène of Two Mexican Vampire Films
Raúl Rodríguez-Hernández and Claudia Schaefer
Selected Bibliography
About the Editors
