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.
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