Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Boydell & Brewer
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film
Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732-1933
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2010
About this book
The first study to propose a unifying logic underlying the many and varied representations of the vampire in literature and culture.
For the last three hundred years, fictions of the vampire have fed off anxieties about cultural continuity. Though commonly represented as a parasitic aggressor from without, the vampire is in fact a native of Europe, and its "metamorphoses," to quote Baudelaire, a distorted image of social transformation. Because the vampire grows strong whenever and wherever traditions weaken, its representations have multiplied with every political, economic, and technological revolution from the eighteenth century on. Today, in the age of globalization, vampire fictions are more virulent than ever, and the monster enjoys hunting grounds as vast as the international market.
Metamorphoses of the Vampire explains why representations of vampirism began in the eighteenth century, flourished in the nineteenth, and came to eclipse nearly all other forms of monstrosity in the early twentieth century. Many of the works by French and German authors discussed here have never been presented to students and scholars in the English-speaking world. While there are many excellent studies that examine Victorian vampires, the undead in cinema, contemporary vampire fictions, and the vampire in folklore, until now no work has attempted to account for the unifying logic that underlies the vampire's many and often apparently contradictory forms.
Erik Butler holds a PhDfrom Yale University and has taught at Emory University and Swarthmore College. His publications include The Bellum Gramaticale and the Rise of European Literature (2010) and a translation with commentary of Regrowth (Vidervuks) by the Soviet Jewish author Der Nister (2011).
For the last three hundred years, fictions of the vampire have fed off anxieties about cultural continuity. Though commonly represented as a parasitic aggressor from without, the vampire is in fact a native of Europe, and its "metamorphoses," to quote Baudelaire, a distorted image of social transformation. Because the vampire grows strong whenever and wherever traditions weaken, its representations have multiplied with every political, economic, and technological revolution from the eighteenth century on. Today, in the age of globalization, vampire fictions are more virulent than ever, and the monster enjoys hunting grounds as vast as the international market.
Metamorphoses of the Vampire explains why representations of vampirism began in the eighteenth century, flourished in the nineteenth, and came to eclipse nearly all other forms of monstrosity in the early twentieth century. Many of the works by French and German authors discussed here have never been presented to students and scholars in the English-speaking world. While there are many excellent studies that examine Victorian vampires, the undead in cinema, contemporary vampire fictions, and the vampire in folklore, until now no work has attempted to account for the unifying logic that underlies the vampire's many and often apparently contradictory forms.
Erik Butler holds a PhDfrom Yale University and has taught at Emory University and Swarthmore College. His publications include The Bellum Gramaticale and the Rise of European Literature (2010) and a translation with commentary of Regrowth (Vidervuks) by the Soviet Jewish author Der Nister (2011).
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
v -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Preface
vii -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Acknowledgments
xi -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction: Cultural Teratology
1 - Part I: The Rise of the Vampire
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1: Vampire Country: Borders of Culture and Power in Central Europe
25 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2: Vampires and Satire in the Enlightenment and Romanticism
52 - Part II: England and France
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3: The Bourgeois Vampire and Nineteenth-Century Identity Theft
83 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4: Dracula: Vampiric Contagion in the Late Nineteenth Century
107 - Part III: Germany
-
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5: Vampirism, the Writing Cure, and Realpolitik: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
127 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6: Vampires in Weimar: Shades of History
152 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Conclusion: The Vampire in the Americas and Beyond
177 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Works Cited
199 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Filmography
215 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
217
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 17, 2024
eBook ISBN:
9781571138170
Original publisher:
Camden House
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781571138170
Keywords for this book
Vampire; literature; film; cultural continuity; parasitic aggressor; European Reformation; political; economic; technological revolution; globalization; Baudelaire; social transformation
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
