Victoria Samuelsson: What Manner of Man is This? The Depiction of Vampire Folklore in Dracula and Fangland

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:533934/fulltext03

Abstract

The vampire figure is very much a part of the literary landscape of today, and has

been so for the last 200 years. The vampire has not always appeared as it does today,

as the rich, urbane gentleman, but has its origins in old folklore legends. The idea that

the vampire figure has changed over the course of history is not new, but instead of

discussing the phenomena influencing, and changing, the vampire motif, this essay

will try to shed light on the aspects of the folklore vampire that are still part of the

vampire of today. By applying the theory of folklorism (folklore not in its original

context, but rather the imitation of popular themes by another social class, or the

creation of folklore for purposes outside the established tradition), presented by Hans

Moser and Hermann Bausinger among others, this essay attempts to prove that the

modern vampire is in fact a folklorism of the old folklore legends. The essay

examines the more recent incarnation of the vampire, the literary vampire who

emerged during the 18th and 19th century, with the intent to prove that, while it is

different from its origin, it has several features in common with its ancestry as well.

To show this, examples from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and the more recent

novel Fangland (2007) by John Marks have been chosen to serve as basis for the

analysis. Both novels clearly show instances where folklore has been brought into the

narrative as a way to define and depict the vampire.

Keywords: Stoker, Bram; Dracula; Marks, John; Fangland; vampire; folklore;

folklorisms; folklorismus; vampire figure; vampire motifs.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of man?
- Bram Stoker
The vampire is a famous literary symbol that has played a role in the pop-cultural
dialogue for the last 200 years. The vampire is nothing new to literature; vampire
motifs can be traced back far through the ages.
1
During the Romantic period several
vampire narratives emerged in Western literature, and the genre peaked during the
Victorian Gothic in the mid to late nineteenth century.
2
During this century, the
vampire started the development from fantastical monster towards romantic hero as
the canon of vampire literature came into being. But before the romantic vampire
there was a completely other revenant who had quite a different place in culture: the
folklore vampire. This figure, which can be seen as both similar to and different from
the modern day vampire, can be found in myths, legends, and folktales from all over
the world: from India and Egypt, Greece and Romania to Britain and Germany. The
pictures of this vampire range from something similar to the English Brownie to a
half-rotten, bloated ghoul-like creature.
Despite the fact that he is not the first, and certainly not the last, Bram
Stoker’s Count Dracula is almost certainly the most recognisable vampire in the
English speaking world. The famous Transylvanian Count was born through Stoker’s
equally ingenious and terrifying epistolary narrative, which, when published in 1897,
became instantly successful (Ellmann vii). Stoker made such an impression on
Western literature that Dracula was not only followed by storylines that developed
the story past Stoker’s narrative (like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula [1992]), but also
inspired the American author John Marks to reimagine the story in the novel
1 The difference between vampire motifs and the vampire figure will be discussed later in the paper.
2 For a list of vampire novels, and their publication dates, see Summers, p. 346. (Sadly, this list is in
alphabetical order by the author’s surnames and not in chronological order.)

Molly McArdle: Blood Soup: The End of "True Blood"

Molly McArdle is working on a novel at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

 

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/blood-soup  June 30th, 2014 

 

 

I’M STILL NOT sure how I was convinced to start watching True Blood. I hate blood. As I type this — at this very mention of the liquid that I am admittedly full of — my hands have shrunk back into the cuffs of my sweater and I’ve scrunched my shoulders up around my neck. Few things make me feel as vulnerable as this life stuff, for which there are few available metaphors because it is itself so potently symbolic. Blood is the blood of blood. There, I have disappeared into my sweater again.

True Blood is full of blood. Vampires sucking human blood. Humans sucking vampire blood. Vampires crying blood instead of tears. Bottled blood. Microwaved blood. Walls covered in blood. Fabrics soaked in blood. Hair made sticky with blood. Characters in rubber gloves scooping up, mopping up, scrubbing out blood. (True Blood’s commitment to showing how a mess is cleaned up, not just made, is one I appreciate.) Often, when it is explosive or particularly bizarre (Seasons 5 and 6 had a fair amount of naked people caked in blood), I don’t really mind it. It’s too unfamiliar to be true. But other times, when a wound is mundane enough, I cannot help but sink into myself, to guard the places where my blood beats loudest.

True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries series, first premiered in 2008. I got on board the summer of 2011, precipitating a desperate marathon of the first three seasons in my un-air conditioned apartment, and have followed it faithfully since then. Until Game of Thrones came along, it was the most popular HBO show after The Sopranos. True Blood, all sex and gore and weird silly magic, is a consummate summer show, something to watch with a sweaty drink in hand and a fan blowing in your face. Its seventh and last season premiered this June 22nd (even they cannot resist making death jokes), and soon the bloodiest TV show I have ever watched will be over.

The vampire we know today comes from southeastern Europe in the early 1700s, when its folklore was first recorded in print (and so publicized), pushing local communities’ preexisting belief into frenzy and introducing the stories to an international audience. Vampires terrify for obvious reasons: they are animated, bloodthirsty corpses. (Several bodies in what is now Serbia were exhumed and then mutilated during this time; and over one hundred graves in Bulgaria have since been found impaled with metal.) Just as real as the fear it inspired, this body of folklore also offered a potent (if grotesque) relief to mourners. In those early stories, vampires always sought out their spouses first. So much of vampirism is about the horror of getting what you want.

True Blood begins when Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress in the northern Louisiana town of Bon Temps, meets and dates the ex-Confederate vampire-next-door Bill Compton (“Bill? I thought it might be Antoine or Basil or like Langford maybe, but Bill? Vampire Bill?”). Bill was born in a house across a field from Sookie’s own, though he’s moved back to Bon Temps for the first time since he left it, alive, to fight in the Civil War. Creator Alan Ball — whose Six Feet Under shared True Blood’s predilection for death and the surreal humor that accompanies it — has described the show as being about “the horrors of intimacy,” and it’s true the series charts how desire by itself can be complicated, and ultimately unsatisfying. But True Blood is also about the enormity and complexity of the world, though much of it is hidden in plain sight. In Season 3, Sookie’s charming, dense brother Jason balks at the existence of supernatural beings in addition to vampires:

“There’s werewolves?”
“Yes.”
“Shit. Bigfoot, is he real too?”
“I don’t know, I guess it’s possible.”
“…Santa?”

Becca Rothfeld: Vampire Socials. The distressingly human lives of vampires today

Becca Rothfeld is the assistant literary editor of The New Republic

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/vampire-socials  September 19th, 2014 

 

 

AT HIS INCEPTION, the vampire was a solitary figure. Typically the occupant of sprawling gothic ruins atop a desolate mountain, he was pallid, fanged, and obviously monstrous, occasionally distinguished from other members of his cohort by red eyes and other dramatic deformities. Often, he hailed from Transylvania, sometimes from other remote quarters of Eastern Europe — if we never learned just where, it only enhanced his mystique — where he invariably had an estate and a family fortune of opaque origins.

He was enigmatic, otherworldly, always a foreigner or a visitor from abroad, maddeningly standoffish and stubbornly impenetrable. Lord Ruthven, the protagonist of John William Polidori’s 1819 novella The Vampyr, had “nothing in common with other men,” and Dracula of the famed 1897 Bram Stoker novel lived in an all-but-inaccessibly remote fortress. Nosferatu, the iconic vampire in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film of the same name, sported claws, pointed ears, and a hunchback. He was strange, sullen and reclusive — nobody’s prom date.

In contrast, today’s vampires have traded their capes for fashionable leather jackets, their claws for manicures — and they’ve taken a turn for the social, crashing all manner of gatherings. From homecoming in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to prom in Twilight, from college fraternities in The Vampire Diaries to Merlotte’s Bar & Grill in True Blood,vampires have rapidly become the life of the human party. They’ve infiltrated our institutions (Twilight’s Edward and The Vampire Diaries’Stefan attend human high schools), and dated — and even occasionally married — our own (Buffy’s Buffy and True Blood’s Sookie boast a string of vampire boyfriends, and Twilight’s Bella marries hers). Starting in the 80s with films like My Best Friend is a Vampire, The Hunger, and Vampire’s Kiss, we’ve witnessed a host of vampires who seek to fit into society. The contemporary British series Being Human goes so far as to center on a vampire named Mitchell whose foremost ambition is to pass for a human being: “I just want something good and normal,” he confesses to his human love interest over a bloodless cup of coffee.

The transition from Nosferatu, so grotesque and off-putting, to Mitchell, who is charming and approachable (if somewhat anemic), is striking: creatures of the night, once satisfied to exist on the margins of society, have irrupted into our communities, intent on assimilation. Vampires like Dracula and Nosferatu helped us make sense of ourselves by differing from us so obviously, so savagely. They were monsters who brought our humanity into acute relief, outsiders who opposed human communities on the “inside.” They menaced us by standing against us, threatening not to obliterate us but rather to alter us — to change us into something terribly, appallingly other. Confronted with their freakishness, we were relieved by our comparative compassion; by what struck us, in the throes of self-satisfaction, as our humanity.

But today’s vampires cannot be counted on to provide such a dramatic contrast with their human counterparts. Where the threat was once external, bearing down on us from without, it’s become internal, originating within — and if it is often imperceptible, masquerading as your high school lab partner or a stranger at the bar, it is that much more treacherous, that much better equipped to chip away at our sense of self. Once, we had vampirism — Dracula — on the one hand, and humanity — Dracula’s righteous opponents — on the other. Now, we have Mitchell of Being Human and Edward of Twilight — vampires who are not quite vampire, humans who are not quite human.

Leah Kern: The Shortcomings of the Victorian Werewolf

Human beings possess an innate drive to create tension; psychologist Carl Jung will

argue that this is because the unconscious mind contains animalistic desires that are socially

unacceptable and must be suppressed. However, these dark cravings of sexuality and violence

manifest in other, more tolerable, forms, such as literature. For centuries, authors have projected

their inner wishes into writing, allowing themselves and their audience to enjoy what is normally

disapproved. Vampire and werewolf topics especially serve as a means to express sexual and

aggressive urges. Although sex and violence are considered far less taboo acts in today‟s world,

earlier time periods rely on stories to illustrate what is denied by society‟s standards, particularly

in the Victorian era. The Victorian period builds upon the Gothic ideology created during the

Romantic era, so Gothic ideas do not disappear with the passing decades—its exploitation of

forbidden desires continues to influence Victorian writers, like Bram Stoker and Clemence

Housman.

During this time, arguably the greatest vampire novel (in terms of its effect on vampire

culture) emerges when Stoker introduces Dracula to Victorian England and to the world. While

this signifies a monumental moment for vampire intrigue, werewolf stories do not collect as

much literary regard until years later. No great werewolf novel is created for Victorian England;

instead, several short stories develop, such as Housman‟s “The Werewolf.” Yet even these

stories fail to compare to Dracula. One must ask why this is this case. Both werewolves and

vampires symbolize the socially unacceptable “other,” where the term, “other,” represents the

socially deviant outsider who fails to conform (sometimes by choice) to societal standards. Even

so, Victorian England still identifies more with the vampire manifestation of this “other.” To

thoroughly examine a vampire versus a werewolf, one finds several similarities in terms of

violence and physical origins; however, werewolves express a less humanistic, sexually

repulsive, nature, which causes society to initially reject them.

When studying the origins of vampire and werewolf myths, one discovers that there are

historical examples for both of these supernatural ideas. Essentially, true, physical cases of

lycanthropy and vampirism exist, evidence that enhances the fear and intrigue behind the myths

and behind the stories created with these myths. In her anthology of short werewolf stories,

Charlotte Otten points out this very concept, noting,

It is dizzying, however, to enter the world of the fictive werewolf. It is not an isolated,

artificially constructed world. Outside the fictive world of werewolves there exists a

world in which the actuality of werewolves has been validated…the world of werewolf

fiction is so unsettling because luring in the culture are documented instances of

lycanthropy. The distinction between fiction and actual life blurs. The horror intensifies

(xxxi). 

Sólveig Geirsdóttir: Night Academy Heroines, Hunters and Strange Vampires

Abstract

It was within the Gothic genre that the literary vampire derived. The literary vampire has

gained new popularity in the last decade with a new formula focusing on sympathetic

vampires. This essay examines four contemporary vampire literary series that have all

included a special vampire school. The four series analyzed in this essay are House of Night

by P.C. and Kristin Cast, Strange Angels by Lili St. Crow, Vampire Academy by Richelle

Mead and Vamps by Nancy A. Collins. The essay determines the school‘s purpose in the

vampires lives and how it affects the protagonists who are all females inflicted with some

kind of vampirism. The first chapter introduces the thesis and material used in the essay. The

second chapter outlines the archtypical vampire focusing on the novel Dracula (1897) and

summarizes the traditional qualities characterising the literary vampire. The third chapter

focuses on describing the heroines and analyzing their behavior and motivation in regards to

their situation at a school filled with other vampires. The fourth chapter goes over the

difference in each series school syllabus and system, and analyzes the purpose of the schools.

The series are analysed in regards to Gothic literature and its heritage. The essay relies mostly

on Gothic Romanced: Consumption, Gender and Technology in Contemporary Fictions by

Fred Botting and The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction edited by Jerrold Hogle for

the analysis, as well as other texts on formula and semantics, contemporary vampire novels

and female heroines.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 2

2 Vampire Tradition....................................................................................................................... 4

3 Heroines........................................................................................................................................ 5

3.1 Rose Hathaway..................................................................................................................... 6

3.2 Cally Monture....................................................................................................................... 7

3.3 Dru Anderson ....................................................................................................................... 7

3.4 Zoey Redbird........................................................................................................................ 8

3.5 Analysis................................................................................................................................. 9

4 Vampire 101............................................................................................................................... 11

4.1 House of Night................................................................................................................... 12

4.2 Schola Prima....................................................................................................................... 13

4.3 Bathory Academy.............................................................................................................. 14

4.4 Vampire Academy............................................................................................................. 14

4.5 Analysis............................................................................................................................... 16

5 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................. 18

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................... 20

1 Introduction

It was within the Gothic genre that the literary vampire derived. The Gothic novel emerged

near the end of the 18th century and was the horror literature of its time. Gothic literature

explores the forbidden desires and fears of its readers, involving supernatural mysteries. The

legend of the vampire has been written about and filmed for decades. The literary vampire

was a sophisticated and terrifying monster embodied most famously in Dracula (1897) by

Bram Stoker. In recent years the legend has gained immense popularity with highly

romanticized vampire novels aimed to entertain teenagers and young adults. The most popular

new formula focuses on the forbidden love between a human and a vampire. In this new

formula the vampire has become the hero instead of the villain. In the last decade a vast

amount of contemporary vampire novels have been published and writing about them all

would be impossible. In this essay I have chosen 4 series of novels in which the protagonist

vampires, all female, go to a special vampire school. I will attempt to determine the schools

purpose in the vampire’s lives and how it affects the heroines.

In 1997 two very different types of entertainment became extremely popular. This was

the year when the pilot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired and the first novel about the

young wizard Harry Potter was published. Buffy presented a new type of vampire hunter; a

hardcore female babe struggling with normal high school while also destined to slay

vampires. The Harry Potter series presented a hidden world where witches and wizards lived

amongst humans and their children attended a large castle like magic school. The immense

popularity of both entertainments produced many similar novels, TV shows and movies

including the four series presented in this essay. I will discuss the similarities further but the

most obvious relation between them is that the protagonists are students at a high school or a

special school.

The four series I have chosen are: House of Night by P.C. and Kristin Cast, Strange

Angels by Lili St. Crow, Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead and Vamps by Nancy A.

Collins. All series feature protagonists inflicted with vampirism, and are aimed to entertain

young adult and teen readers. 

Lejla Panjeta: Monster as a Superhero: an Essay on Vampire Vogue in Contemporary Film Culture

Studii si Cercetari de Istoria Artei. Teatru, Muzica, Cinematogr;2011/2012, Vol. 5-6 Issue 49-50

* Lejla Panjeta, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the International University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Arts and Social

Sciences, Visual Arts and Communication Design. E-mail address: panjeta.lejla@bih.net.ba. 

Abstract

The worldwide popular series Twilight is the mixed genre phenomenon in literature, media and

cinema. After monstrous cinema interpretations of vampires, Edward Cullen becomes a vampire that

women fall in love with. Narrative draws on the legend of vampires as well as on the fairy tales

archetype of the love between The Lady and the Beast. Sexual connotation in the stories of vampires

are not new, but the global identification of the audience with the main characters in the romantic-

horror plot in this series needs to be analyzed through the evolution of the vampire genre and

psychology related issues. The popularity of this series and blossoming hybrid genre is related to the

artificial catharsis and fulfillment of the market demand. Contemporary audience demands “to be

special” and these profitable narratives are the fulfilled promise to the audience.

Keywords: vampire legends, teen vampire genre, abstinence narrative, vampires in cinema, catharsis.

INTRODUCTION: ROMANTIC MONSTER OXYMORON

“And so the lion fell in love with a lamb… What a stupid lamb… What a sick, masochistic lion”.1 One

of the omens from the Book of Revelation that the world as we know it will come to an end is described when

the lamb lies down with the lion. The story of Twilight categorized as teen vampire romance genre is the

apocalypse of opposite genres: romance and horror. The horror genre as we know it and the romance genre

have reached the point where their elements need to be combined together in order to survive the market

demand of a consuming audience that desires more catharsis induced by adrenalin and romance ecstasy.2

Judging on the gained profit, this planetary popular series is a phenomenon of the 21st century. Over

17 million copies of Twilight Saga have been sold and translated into 37 languages. A graphic novel has

been issued, and the first three books of the series have been made into movies. According to the box office

reports from the American and international market, the movie Twilight3 made approximately 400 million

dollars,4 New Moon5 over 700 million dollars,6 Eclipse7 700 million dollars,8 and Breaking Dawn I 9 over

700 million dollars.10

1 Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Vol. 1, London: Atom, 2006, p. 240.

2 On this matter, see also Lejla Panjeta, “Popularni kinematografski vampirizam”, Hrvatski filmski ljetopis, No. 69, 2012.

3 Director: Catherine Hardwicke. Release year: 2008.

4 See “Box Office Mojo: Twilight”, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=twilight08.htm; last consulted in December 2011.

5 Director: Chris Weitz. Release year: 2009.

6 See “Box Office Mojo: New Moon”, at <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=newmoon.htm>; last consulted in

December 2011.

7 Director: David Slade. Release year: 2010.

8 See “Box Office Mojo: Eclipse”, at <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=eclipse.htm>; last consulted in December 2011.

9 Director: Bill Condon. Release year: 2011.

10 See “Box Office Mojo: Breaking Dawn I”, at <http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=breakingdawn.htm>; last consulted

in December 2011.

Daði Halldórsson: Vampires Now and Then From origins to Twilight and True Blood

This essay follows the vampires from their origins to their modern selves and their extreme popularity throughout the years. The essay raises the question of why vampires are so popular and what it is that draws us to them. It will explore the beginning of the vampire lore, how they were originally just cautionary tales told by the government to the villagers to scare them into a behaviour that was acceptable. In the first chapter the mythology surrounding the early vampire lore will be discussed and before moving on in the second chapter to the cult that has formed around the mythological and literary identities of these creatures. The essay finishes off with a discussion on the most recent popular vampire related films Twilight and New Moon and TV-series True Blood and their male vampire heroes Edward Cullen and Bill Compton. The essay relies heavily on The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and other Monsters written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley as well as The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula written by Eric Nuzum as well as the films Twilight directed by Catherine Hardwicke and New Moon directed by Chris Weitz and TV-series True Blood. Eric Nuzum's research on the popularity of vampires inspired the writing of this essay. As well as these two books the research of the paper was mostly done on the internet because of the expansion of web pages and internet users it has become a valuable part in helping people to find their inner vampire and connect with others with the same vampire interest.

Index

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 2

What are vampires? ............................................................................................................................ 2

Vampire Cult ......................................................................................................................................... 6

Vampires in modern media ................................................................................................................ 13

Twilight ................................................................................................................................................ 13

True Blood ........................................................................................................................................... 21

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 24

Works Cited ......................................................................................................................................... 26

Internet Research ................................................................................................................................ 26

Introduction

Vampires, real or not real, have been around for hundreds of years and have been gaining more popularity throughout recent years in their various forms. The vampire lore has grown immensely from their mythological beginnings to something that people believe might exist in today's world. With the help of Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Joss Whedon and Stephanie Meyer the vampires have continued to be popular throughout the years. It seems that what was once feared has now become something that people seek out, whether it is to entertain oneself, through some kind of media; books, films, television shows etc., or to find somewhere to belong. In the 20th and 21st century it seems like vampires are a big part of our imagination and in fact, as will be detailed later on, a big part of some people's lives. It is this extreme interest in vampires that inspired the writing of this paper.

There are those that strive to be like vampires, those that dress in a certain fashion and those that believe themselves to be actual vampires, for better or for worse. There are many questions that need to be raised as to what makes people think that they are vampires. Why do people feel the need to seek out these vampires? What is it about vampires that make them so appealing? This particular paper will most likely never find its answer to what it is about vampires and the vampire legend that cultivates us and keeps us wanting to know more but hopefully bring us closer.

Again and again the vampire lore and vampire related content surfaces and human kind does not seem to be able to resist it. Most recent are the books and films surrounding the Twilight Saga along with the popular TV-series True Blood which will be discussed later in the text. Before being able to understand what it is about vampires that makes the human race so enthralled with them it needs to be established what exactly are vampires? Are they real or are they purely figments of our imagination?

What are vampires?

There are many different types of vampires known in the world. There are folkloric vampires, living vampires, literary vampires, psychic vampires and psychotic vampires to name a few examples. Psychotic vampires are those who are unable to function in the normal community mostly due to the fact that they mutilate, kill and drink the blood of others around them. The psychic vampires are those who drain the life force or life energy of others, either willingly or unwittingly. This can be achieved through magic or just ill content towards another person. Those who are considered psychic vampires are, in the broadest sense, anyone who drains the energy from another by whatever act. They can also be in the form of people that constantly need help or ask others to do their work for them. Literary vampires are those created through fiction such as Count Dracula, Lestat De Lioncourt, Blade, Edward Cullen and so many others. In modern times living vampires are people who believe that they are real life vampires, based on what is most commonly known about vampires through popular vampire mythology or fiction. To supposedly become a vampire most often people have to go through some sort of gruesome bloody ritual involving the blood of those who they believe to be vampires. The living vampires were those who had supernatural powers and fed on human blood, such as witches and warlocks. These living vampires would become vampires in their death. The folkloric vampires are almost all beings with supernatural powers. They include demons, revenants and those who would return from their grave after dying from the plague, drowning, being killed by another vampire, from possession or from any unnatural causes. These are the most common vampires and are only seen at night, around midnight. They must always return to their grave before dawn (Guiley 289-290). 

Jeremy Magnan: Allegories of vampire cinema

Jeremy Magnan

Department of English & Creative Writing

Allegories of Vampire Cinema is a theoretical film essay involving the

issue of spectator relations to vampire films before, during, and after

viewings. The piece closely examines which character the spectators are

truly meant to connect with. This is an interesting and important issue to

raise as it offers a new analysis that had not previously been explored,

aligning the spectators not with the protagonists of these stories, but with

the vampire itself. In my research, I gathered dozens of books, magazine

articles, and journal entries to delve deeply into the horror genre and

vampire subgenre. I also screened over three dozen vampire films, though

only a handful are cited directly. The essay was pieced together from the

beginning of January through March when, upon completion, I presented

my findings at the 2008 PCA/ACA National Conference in San Francisco.

Implications that are brought to light upon the revelation that the spectator

is being aligned with vampires include the notion that the vampire film

may not be an isolated case. With further study, theories and analyses may

bring about spectator relations and alignments with not only a myriad of

other antagonistic horror icons, but antagonists throughout the entire scope

of film.

Many authors have sought to lend insight into the metaphorical relationship between the

vampire, their victims, and even their spectators. On the spectators of horror films in

general, Joseph Biggs and Dennis Petrie offer that “...one goes to the horror film in order to

have a nightmare... a dream whose undercurrent of anxiety both presents and masks the

desire to fulfill and be punished for certain conventionally unacceptable impulses (Biggs &

Petrie, 2008, p. 484).” It is their position that the spectators of horror view these films due

to a subconscious desire to see their “unacceptable impulses” played out by the monster (in

our discussion, vampires) and to be punished for the surrogate actions that the monster

plays out in our stead. In regards to the vampire, Jorg Waltje sees our clear alignment with

the vampire as soon as we sit down in the theater. He explains:

“The vampire only comes out in the dark and spends the

rest of the time in his coffin. The spectators voluntarily sit

in a coffin (the darkened cinema), watching a screen on

which not only light but also (within and between every

frame) darkness is projected (Waltje, 2000, p. 29).”

While I agree that this is a startlingly clear example of our relationship to the vampire,

this vampire-spectator relationship can be further clarified through a common

iconographical object in most of these films in a way that has not as yet been established.

Lacan’s famous mirror stage is one of his pillars of seeking out the moment when the

identity of a child in relation to itself begins to develop. “The child... can already recognize

as such his own image in a mirror. This recognition is indicated in the illuminative mimicry

of the Aha- Erlebnis... This event can take place... from the age of six months... up to the

age of eighteen months (Lacan, 2004, p. 441-442).” Aha, you may say, but the vampire

casts no reflection, does it not? Stoker himself, Dracula’s keeper, has been the catalyst for

your exclamation: “This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I

could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror (Stoker,

2003, p. 30-31)!” So what would Dracula’s answer to Lacan’s mirror stage be in fact?

Fiona Peters states:

“Vampires have no need for an unconscious- nor can they

be seen in mirrors because they do not need to rely on the

process of identifications that Lacan describes; in other

words they have not become formed as human subjects,

and in the case of those who become vampires after being

human... they have evaded the symbolic order... (Peters,

2006, p. 180)”

In Peters’ argument, humans who become vampires have separated and transcended

themselves from the symbolism that is the vampire to become one of them. Interesting...

My question for Peters would be What if someone was a vampire and didn’t know it? Must

they still graduate from the fully-fledged human’s mirror stage? I believe they do. But who

ever heard of someone not knowing that they are in fact a vampire? Perhaps my line of

questions has no value... I believe Slavoj Žižek had it right when he said, “It is therefore

clear why vampires are invisible to the mirror: because they have read Lacan and,

consequently, know how to behave... (Žižek, 19992, p. 126)”

M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo: Vampire meets girl: gender roles and the vampire’s side of the story in twilight, midnight sun and the vampire diaries

NeoAmericanist;2011, Vol. 5 Issue 2, January 2011

by M. Carmen Gomez-Galisteo, Universidad de Alcalá (Spain)

The Monday after New Moon, the film based on the second book of the Twilight saga by Stephenie

Meyer, opened worldwide, I asked my junior year students in my seventeenth- and eighteenth-century

American literature seminar if they had watched it. That in the middle of a discussion about Jonathan

Edwards’ fear-filling sermons about the dangers and the extreme pain awaiting sinners in Hell. Though

the looks on my students’ faces said — “This is it, she has lost it after reading so many sermons by wackos,”

my question was to the point. The Puritans lived in a world where they believed that supernatural

happenings could take place anytime, where the Devil was always lurking to stalk them by sending witches

or sea monsters, and where miracles might happen (though they were rather called instances of God’s

providence, reflecting the Puritans’ rejection of the Catholic terminology). That there exist men who can

transform themselves into wolves or evil creatures feeding on others’ blood would not have been a matter

of too much wonder for them. Even reputed Puritan divine Cotton Mather, author of over 400 books,

had devoted a section of his masterpiece Magnalia Christi Americana (The History of Christ’s Church in

America) to supernatural occurrences. The Puritans’ fascination with natural sciences and their interest

in the new scientific methods that were being developed at the time did not prevent them from believing

in the Occult or the supernatural, just the contrary. The Devil being a constant presence in their daily

lives, surely, the Puritans would have had no qualms in attributing vampires’ and werewolves’ special

characteristics to witchcraft or the devil’s doings — and put them to the bonfire right away. Because the

Puritans would have found it a perfectly logical explanation for the Cullens’ mysteriousness and their

sometimes bizarre behavior that they were vampires, the Twilight saga thus is heir to an early American

tradition of believing in the supernatural.

It is recurrent among twentieth-century rewritings of famous monster stories that the point of view

is no longer that of the more or less helpless victim or even that of the rather cold, and unsympathetic

(to the monster’s plight) omniscient third-person narrator; instead, we are privy the point of view of the

so-called monster, whose monstrosity comes to be questioned. In these retellings, the monster appears

to be much more human, having feelings and emotions that up to them had been impossible for him to

have due to his very characterization as a monster. For instance, Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, through

the eyes of the homonymous protagonist, the servant of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, offered a much more

humane vision of the physician and his nemesis than Robert Louis Stevenson had provided. Mary

Shelley’s Frankenstein, the most recent cinematographic adaptation of the popular nineteenth-century

novel, brings attention to the story’s authorship to claim a version closer to the original, far from other,

somewhat sugar-coated and at other times frankly risible representations of Victor Frankenstein’s

creature as a man with a greenish face and screws from his temples. This Frankenstein’s creature is

far from being happy with his lot and pledges revenge on his maker for his present anguish. In these

contemporary, post-modern retellings, the focus (and thence, the reader’s sympathy) is on the monster

that cannot prevent his condition, much to his own chagrin, no matter his efforts to put an end to his

situation. These are monsters, indeed, but they try their best not to be. They also suffer from pangs of

their consciences, telling them not to kill unnecessarily and, even when forced to kill, they are plagued by

remorse and guilt. These monsters are, in way, moved by biological determinism: they try to avoid being

what they are, but they miserably fail, because of their very natures — or their genetic makeup, if you wish.

A sequel told from the point of view of a character from the original novel is a rather popular

literary development. Well-known examples include Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (off Jane Eyre

by Charlotte Brontë), The Wind Done Gone (off Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell), March

by Geraldine Brooks (off Little Women by Louisa May Alcott), or Pemberley by Emma Tennant (off

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen), just to name a few. In 2008, Stephenie Meyer’s work in progress,

Midnight Sun, was posted all over the Internet, with all the efforts to put a stop to this violation of

copyright miserably failing. Eventually, given the multiplicity of pirate versions, Meyer decided to give up

writing Midnight Sun and instead posted the manuscript in draft form as it was in her own website (www.

stepheniemeyer.com). What was intended to be the fifth book of the Twilight saga represents Edward’s

side of the story. It is a very rare gift to have an insight into the male protagonist’s thoughts. See Pride

and Prejudice— we don’t know Darcy’s true thoughts till the end. This makes Midnight Sun so relevant to

the study and better comprehension of the Twilight saga. In Twilight we see Bella’s despair for receiving

the cold shoulder from her biology class lab partner during her first days in Forks. It is not until later in

the novel when we discover Edward’s reasons for such an attitude towards Bella. Midnight Sun analyzes

Edward’s thoughts at meeting his forbidden object of desire.

Veronica Hollinger: The Vampire and the Alien: Variations on the Outsider

(Science Fiction Studies 48, Volume 16, Part 2, July 1989)

The Vampire and the Alien: Variations on the Outsider¹

(Winner, Pioneer Award, 1990)

That SF is capable of evoking in its readers "a sense of wonder" has become something of a critical cliché.² Another and equally characteristic side of the SF coin, however, is its role in what we might term "the domestication of the fantastic." H.G. Wells introduces this issue, for example, in his "Preface to the Scientific Romances" (1933). "Nothing," he writes, "remains interesting where anything may happen." For this reason, the SF writer should provide the reader with orderly ground-rules for his or her fictional universes. Wells concludes that "[the writer] must help [the reader] in every possible unobtrusive way to domesticate the impossible hypothesis" (p. 241; Wells's emphasis). This is reiterated, in different terms, by Eric S. Rabkin, who argues that

what is important in the definition of science fiction is...the idea that paradigms do control our view of all phenomena, that within these paradigms all normal problems can be solved, and that abnormal occurrences must either be explained or initiate the search for a better (usually more inclusive) paradigm. (p. 121)

For this reason, while the SF genre expands the scope and the variety of the physical universe, it often does so—ironically perhaps—at the expense of what cannot be explained in terms of natural law and scientific possibility —i.e., at the expense of the super-natural or the un-natural, the ontologically indeterminate area of the fantastic.     

From the generic perspective of SF, the territory of the fantastic lies just across the border, and SF has always been effective at expanding its own territories through the scientific rationalization of elements originally located in the narrative worlds of fantasy. In Colin Manlove's words, "the science fiction writer throws a rope of the conceivable (how remotely so does not matter) from our world to his [or hers]..." (p. 7). Manlove points out that "as soon as the 'supernatural' has become possible we are no longer dealing with fantasy but with science fiction" (p. 3).            

A classic example of this domestication of the fantastic occurs in Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End (1953), a novel which draws the conventional figure of the devil—bat-wings, barbed tail, and all—across the border of the supernatural into SF territory. Childhood's End not only provides a "plausible" narrative framework for its demystification of the devil-figure; it also aims to explain the powerful ongoing presence of this figure in our collective race-memory. Clarke thus manages to transform mythic fantasy into alien reality while maintaining the "sense of wonder" inscribed in the original figure.         

The vampire, a less grandiose but equally horrific archetype, is one satanic figure which is currently enjoying a resurgence of literary and critical popularity.³ "Immortalized" by Bram Stoker in his classic Gothic novel, Dracula (1897), and still most typically associated with the horror genre, the vampire too has occasionally crossed the border from fantasy to SF, undergoing varieties of domestication in works such as Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954), Tanith Lee's Sabella, or the Blood Stone (1980), and David Bischoff's Vampires of Nightworld (1981).         

Michael Vorsino: The Dragon, the Raven and the Ring

Journal of Dracula Studies 5 (2003)

[A TSD member, Michael Vorsino is completing his Masters degree in History (with thesis on Vlad Dracula) at the University of Texas at Arlington. A single father, he has two daughters – Samantha and Priscilla.]

Southeastern Europe has long been one of the world’s hotbeds of instability and strife. Owing in part to the rise of the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the simultaneous decline of the Byzantine Empire, this region was used as a marching ground for numerous armies. In Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897), the Count refers to this instability when he tells Jonathan Harker: “In the region through which you came last night, there can be but little doubt; for it was the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk. Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots, or invaders” (27).

In the early to mid-fifteenth century, as the Ottoman tide reached its apex, freedom from the suzerainty of Ottoman dominion was a dream shared by many regional leaders. Relationships and partnerships were forged between these leaders, most of which were not entirely successful, but few are more dynamic than the triangle that was formed between Vlad Dracul, his son Vlad Dracula (better known by Romanian historians as Vlad Ţepeş) and John Hunyadi.

Since the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the countries in this part of Europe have been sandwiched between the dichotomous forces of the Christian west and the Muslim east. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were particularly difficult, as the expansion of the Ottoman tide swept across the continent. Striving to preserve the independence of their states, this region has not surprisingly produced some of the most incredible men of the time.  

John Hunyadi was a celebrated war hero, made legendary by his confrontations with the Ottoman Turks.  He was a man of immense power and wealth, often financing campaigns largely out of his personal funds. His ultimate desire was to see the Ottomans expelled from Europe forever. His political and military machinations reached into surrounding countries, including Wallachia, where he set up and deposed some of its leaders (based on their perceived loyalty to the Christian cause), including Vlad Dracul, and his son Vlad Ţepeş (henceforth in this essay referred to as Dracula). Dracula was driven by a passionate hatred of all that would disrupt Wallachian independence, especially the Turks. This enmity was fueled in part by a period of Turkish captivity during which he had endured tortures of several kinds, including frequent use of the lash by his Turkish tutors. When Vlad Dracula became voivode of Wallachia, he became widely known for his liberal use of impalement as a form of punishment, hence his nickname “the Impaler.” This torturous method of execution was used with great effectiveness as a means of psychological warfare in his brutal battles with the forces of Mehmed  “the Conqueror,” who was one of the most powerful sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Because of his opposition to the Ottomans, Vlad Dracula is seen by many as the father of Romanian sovereignty.