Vampire Literature Research Articles

Lord Byron, Charles Taylor, and the Romantic Critique of Life

Previous articleNext article No AccessLord Byron, Charles Taylor, and the Romantic Critique of LifeColin JagerColin JagerRutgers University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Wordsworth Circle Volume 47, Number 1Winter 2016Romantic Religion Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/TWC47010017 Views: 30Total views on this site © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Dark Ecology and Queer, Amphibious Vampires

This paper argues that early vampire narratives can be reread as queer ecological fictions, darkly re-imagining the human as a liminal, amphibious entity. I highlight the importance of the amphibian—a slippery, ambiguous creature—to contemporary eco-deconstructive accounts that seek to disrupt and queer species categorizations, focusing in particular on Timothy Morton’s notion of “dark ecology” (2007). Early vampire literature, I argue, similarly deconstructs the distinction between different species through its erotic depictions of enmeshed ecologies. Analyzing the new blood-relations established in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and the figure of the queer female vampire described as “amphibious” in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), I suggest that vampire narratives depict dark new ecologies, establishing an “in-betweeness” shared by the living and the undead. The final part of this paper considers the importance of loss to current theorizations of queer ecology: Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands (2010) has recently advocated a state of suspended mourning for what has been destroyed by anthropocentric and homophobic violence. I posit the haunting figure of the vampire as one example of literature’s “non-normalizing relationship to the past” (Mortimer-Sandilands)—a relation of return that might form an important part of queer, ecological resistance to current practices of unmarked destruction.

THE “WRETCHED ITALIAN QUACK”: BRADDON’S CRITIQUE OF MEDICINE IN “GOOD LADY DUCAYNE”

A critical darling, Bram Stoker’s1897 novelDraculafeatures several infamous blood transfusions. In that novel, Lucy Westenra receives blood transfusions from four different men, making her, according to Dr. Van Helsing, a polyandrist (158). In Stoker's novel, transfusion is not about medical verisimilitude so much as about romance or eroticism. Perhaps because ofDracula's status, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1896 story “Good Lady Ducayne” is often read as a vampire tale because it, too, includes blood transfusions. However, Braddon's engagement with contemporary medicine is very different than Stoker’s, since, unlikeDracula, Braddon's story engages with the experience of day-to-day medical treatment and is strongly invested in medical verisimilitude. Lauren M. E. Goodlad identifies the story's engagement with the medical profession largely through the character of Dr. Stafford, whom she views as a representative of the male-dominated, professional establishment. In Goodlad's reading, Lady Ducayne herself is a figure in both vampire literature and New Woman discourse as an “odd” woman, who becomes an “anti patriarchal figure of women's uncanny power to signify” (213). Goodlad's perceptive reading shows how the female vampire undermines conventional medicine, as embodied by Dr. Stafford. Yet, there is another physician in the story: Dr. Parravicini. If we take Dr. Parravicini as our starting point, we see that Braddon's critique of the medical profession is more wide-ranging and more radical than it previously appeared. What is Dr. Parravicini doing in this story? What is his relationship to Stafford and to the medical establishment? What does Braddon's realistic depiction of anesthesia and transfusion indicate about the medical profession and about the medicalization of modern culture?

Psychic vampirism in contemporary psychoanalysis: Issues of pathological identification and sadomasochistic perversion

Abstract In this article, I consider the use of the metaphorics of vampirism in contemporary psychoanalytic theory. I examine the concept of psychic vampirism as a clinical phenomenon as evinced in two case studies and argue that psychic vampirism includes a sadomasochistic perversion and a specific identification with a narcissistic (m)other that leads to a general manner of identifying that is in itself pathological. Further, I argue that in the psychoanalytic clinical situation a psychic vampiric transference may manifest with either masochism or sadism predominating. I also demonstrate the pertinence of the literary vampire, via Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire (1976), to this clinical development. Finally, I suggest that psychic vampirism is likely to become more salient clinically, given the vampire’s current cultural popularity.

From pathology to invisibility: age identity as a cultural construct in vampire fiction

A diachronic analysis of the way the literary vampire has been characterised from the Victorian era up to the contemporary period underlines a clear evolution that seems particularly relevant from the perspective of ageing studies. One of the permanent features characterising the fictional vampire from its origins to its current manifestations in literature is precisely the vampire’s disaffection with the effects of ageing in spite of its old chronological age. Nonetheless, even though the vampire’s appearance does not age, the way it has been presented in literature has significantly evolved from a remarkable aged look during the Victorian period in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre: A Tale” (1819), Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to young adulthood in Anne Rice’s An Interview with the Vampire (1976) and Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark (2001), adolescence in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight (2005-2008), and even childhood in John Ajvide Lindquist’s Let the Right One In (2004), thus underlining a significant process of rejuvenation through time despite the vampire’s apparent disaffection with the effects of ageing. This article shows how the representations of the vampire in literature reflect a shift from the embodiment of pathology to the invisibility, or the denial, of old age and how this, in turn, reflects cultural conceptualisations and perceptions of ageing.

Writing Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?

The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation. (first paragraph)

Bad Blood: The Cost of Sexual Curiosity in Archetypal Tales

The article examines the motif of the sexual curiosity of pubescent girls in two archetypal tales, the horror film Carrie (1976) and the fairy tale 'Sneewittchen' (1812). Taking a brief detour through early nineteenth-century vampire literature, it investigates the hazards of sexuality, the significance of violence and the meaning of monsters. It illustrates not only the cost of sexual curiosity for the characters under discussion, but also reflects on our own apparently insatiable curiosity about tales of terror.

Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (review)

Reviewed by: Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Heide Crawford (bio) Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. Edited by Peter Day. Amsterdam-New York: Rodopi, 2006. ix + 243 pp. $70.00. Much has been written about the history of the vampire in folklore, literature and film in recent years, but with this edited volume, Peter Day traces the vampire from its early origins in folklore to its most modern reincarnation [End Page 518] as a metaphor for the human condition in one volume. To accomplish this, Day has organized in two parts a total of fifteen essays (Part I: "Legends of the Vampire," and Part II: "Vampires for the Modern Mind") that address the cultural-historical beginnings of the vampire, how it functions in literature, film, art, and even legalese as a metaphor for the human condition. As Day states in his introduction, "vampires have proved to be incredibly adaptive survivors, flourishing in the media and thriving in the popular imagination of modern societies" (ix). The vampire is clearly an icon of horror that has endured for centuries, some might argue for millennia, and several contributors refer to Nina Auerbach's seminal work on the enduring image of the vampire, Our Vampires, Ourselves (University of Chicago Press, 1997) when they reference her observation that vampires reflect the cultures that they inhabit (6). However, what distinguishes the vampire from other monsters—whether in folklore, literature, art or film—is that the vampire has a recognizable, if not an often beautiful, human form. As several contributors to this volume mention (for example, Pete Remington), the vampire often demonstrates very human characteristics, such as regret and depression about its monstrous nature, which distinguishes it from other monsters in literature, art, and film. Day begins his volume with an essay by Elizabeth Miller, who has published extensively on Bram Stoker's paradigmatic vampire novel Dracula (1897). In her essay, Miller clears up misconceptions about Stoker's approach to writing his novel by presenting the likely sources for Stoker's vampire. She makes it clear that Stoker "did not base his vampire story on legends connected with the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler" (3), but that he simply used the name, because he discovered that the word "Dracula" means "devil" in Wallachian. Though Miller does mention that the vampire entered western European literature in the eighteenth century in Germany, she associates its origins in German literature with the onset of Romantic literature toward the end of the century. In fact, the first vampire poem in German literature, "Der Vampir" by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, was published in 1747. Several contributors to this volume address the cultural-historical origins of vampire beliefs in their essays in Part I. Darren Oldridge investigates the historical construction of belief in his essay, asking the question: "If perfectly rational, well-educated people could accept the existence of roaming corpses three hundred years ago, why is the same idea inconceivable today?" (83). He explores this problem by borrowing a concept from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, which posits that "people make sense of things around them in the context of a 'system of belief'" (83). Considering the plethora of vampire literature that addresses its origins in southeastern Europe and its [End Page 519] representation in nineteenth-century British literature, Phil Bagust's essay on the history of the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine, is a refreshing exploration of the demonization of this animal, which was the world's largest carnivorous marsupial. In his essay, Bagust demonstrates how vampiric traits, such as a preference for attacking the jugular vein of an animal and devouring particular organs such as the liver as opposed to the whole carcass, were applied to the Thylacine in an effort to demonize it and officially sanction its persecution. The result is that its vampiric image has endured in popular culture. Peter Mario Kreuter's essay is not so much an actual critical investigation of theories surrounding the etymology of the word "vampire," as it is an emotionally-laden defense of his own claims in his book Der Vampirglaube in Südosteuropa. Studien zur Genese, Bedeutung und Funktion. Rumänien und der Balkanraum (Weidler, 2001) [Vampire belief in southeastern Europe...

Gustav Meyrink and the Evolution of the Literary Vampire: From Feared Bloodsucker to Esoteric Phenomenon

When the satirist, fantasist, and occultist Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932) began publishing in the early twentieth century, the figure of the vampire was already well-established as a literary motif in German literature. During this period numerous works appeared that depicted vampires based upon the model of Bram Stoker. While commonly conceived as a fearsome, bloodsucking, and seductive creature, short stories by Gustav Meyrink challenged this conventional representation of the vampire. The following study introduces Meyrink’s vampire tales and highlights how the author employs and comments on the traditional features of this motif, in the process of which he radically reshapes the motif itself. The result is that Meyrink offers his readers descriptions of vampiric phenomena informed by esoteric thought and turn-of-the-century occultist trends. If vampires and their monstrous kin are indeed carriers of culture, as Jeffrey Cohen, a leading critic of monster theory, contends, then Meyrink’s creation of an esoteric vampire gives voice to the significant role of the occult movement at the turn of the century and its place within the crisis of modernity.

Sucking, Bleeding, Breaking: On the Dialectics of Vampirism, Capital, and Time*

In this paper we argue for a dialectical understanding of vampirism, capital, and time, which involves placing each of these elements in tension, both internally and in relation to each other. Starting from Marx's comments on the vampiric nature of capital, we draw out the importance of time in his argument. Rather than simply adding time to vampires and capital, we argue for a critical rethinking of time which, responding to Bergson, poses a ‘dialectic of duration’ in which time is neither simply continuous nor discontinuous. Drawing on vampire literature and film, we trace this dialectic of duration through the erratic feeding habits of vampires, of capital, and of contemporary producers and consumers. Reflecting on the meaning of time for Marx and for capital, we raise questions about resistance and the future, and conclude by outlining a temporal dialectic of capital that stresses both the reproductive risk and the political promise of the vampire.

Jelinek's radical radio: Deconstructing the woman in context

The Spring 1988 issue of Feminist Studies, devoted entirely to deconstruction, asks whether the French have offered feminists a useful methodology. Focusing a deconstructive lens on the work of Elfriede Jelinek suggests that they have. Austrian socialist Jelinek (born 1946), one of the most radical and original writers in German, is sadly, little known to native English speakers. A highly controversial figure, she has been likened to a literary vampire, one whose images of violence make men squirm. Her fifth novel, The Piano Player (1983), for example, provoked critiques titled “Maternal Apocalypse,” “Motherlove as Torture,” “Sure Shot with Poison,” and “Your Evil Eye, Elfriede.” A maverick among feminist authors, she uses an impersonal, ironic mode, exploring through parodies of mass media images the production of subjectivity, particularly as clichés contribute to political disempowerment. Her consistent negativity suggests the influence of deconstruction. Her radio plays, in particular, challenge the dyad male/female, uncoupling the sexual signifier from its anatomical referent while systematically dismantling the rhetoric of bourgeois humanism veiling the brutal contexts Jelinek exposes. Inspired by critical discussions among Anglo-American critics, this paper examines five of Jelinek's radio dramas as illustrative of feminist post-structuralist narrative, one in particular appearing especially timely: The King Bees (1976) takes up the issue of reproductive and genetic engineering, exploring the context of power and collusion among men in a way that assuages fears of deconstruction's impotence. This is activist fiction at its best.