According to legend, fiction, and occult beliefs, a vampire is a human corpse that has come back to life and lives off the blood it sucks from human beings. Vampires were popularized in American films with Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897).
Traditional folkloric vampires have comparatively little to do with many literary or movie vampires. Vampire traditions exist throughout virtually all of Eastern and Central Europe. Similar sounding words exist in Slavic, Finno-Ugric, and Romance languages. Variations include, upir, wampir, vampyr, and upior. They may all derive from ubir, a Turkic word for "witch."
Source: The Encyclopedia of Spirits by Judika Illes
"The Vampire" by Philip Burne-Jones, 1897. Image: Wikimedia Commons
Dracula
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This title contains in-depth critical discussions of Bram Stoker's novel. Since its publication in 1897 Bram Stoker's ""Dracula"" has never been out of print, and - while many monsters have come before Dracula, and many since - Stoker's vampire has taken on an iconic status. On the surface, the novel is a classic tale of horror and suspense, a battle between good and evil, light and dark, the supernatural and the natural. However, a closer examination the novel opens up an intricate portrait of Victorian anxieties, leading contemporary scholars to often view the novel as the site of a battle between the old world and the new. Edited by literary scholar Jack Lynch of Rutgers University, Newark, this volume in the Critical Insights series considers the Gothic classic from a variety of critical viewpoints. As Lynch points out in his introduction, ""Dracula"" received scant critical attention prior to the 1960s and 1970s-though much attention has been paid to the novel over the past few decades. Overview essays by Bridget M. Marshall and Camille-Yvette Welsch examine the literary history of the vampire and the critical reception of Stoker's most famous work respectively. Writers Matthew J. Bolton, Allan Johnson, and David Glover all consider Stoker's novel in the context of the waning days of the Victorian era as the creep of modernity threatened the period's established beliefs and values. Similarly Beth E. McDonald looks at the novel as its characters turn to sacred rituals as a way of avoiding change. Together, critic Carrol L. Fry and psychologist Carla Edwards examine the novel from a psychological perspective, exploring the connections the novel makes with some of our most deepest fears. Samuel Lyndon Gladden writes about the use of the word earnest in the novel as a link between Stoker and his one-time friend Oscar Wilde. Critic Jimmie E. Cain, Jr., analyzes the novel from a political perspective in the wake of the Crimean War while distinguished feminist critic Nancy Armstrong offers a survey of feminist readings before turning her attention to the notions of Utopia and individual fulfillment. The volume concludes with a sweeping essay that combines Marxist, feminist, and post-colonialist readings into a consideration on race, capitalism, and aesthetics. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes.
Vlad
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Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern-day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won't mind a few disappearances? Vlad" is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead: dispossessed after centuries of mayhem by Eastern European wars and rampant blood shortages. More than a postmodern riff on "the vampire craze," Vladis also an anatomy of the Mexican bourgeoisie, as well as our culture's ways of dealing with death. For - as in Dracula - Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asunci?n fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?"
The Vampire Book
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From Vlad the Impaler to Barnabas Collins to Edward Cullen to Dracula and Bill Compton, renowned religion expert and fearless vampire authority J. Gordon Melton, PhD takes the reader on a vast, alphabetic tour of the psychosexual, macabre world of the blood-sucking undead. Digging deep into the lore, myths, pop culture, and reported realities of vampires and vampire legends from across the globe, The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead exposes everything about the blood thirsty predator.
Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage
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Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage re-appraises Stoker's key fictions in relation to his working life. It takes Stoker's work from the margins to centre stage, exploring how Victorian theatre's melodramatic and Gothic productions influenced his writing and thinking.