Romanian Folklore and Literary Representations of Vampires

Abstract

This article presents nineteenth-century Romanian folklore about vampire-like creatures which is analysed in reference to two literary representations of the vampire Dracula. I argue that the folklore tradition establishes a body-oriented perspective, conducive to a feminist analysis of the role of vampire creatures in socializing the otherness of nature echoed in the sexualized powerful female body. The perspective emerging from the folkloric material is subversive in relation to the social and sexual controls enabled across the axes of gender and class by the use of vampire figures in industrial urban cultures of the late nineteenth century.