Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture

Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: William Patrick Day
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813153948
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
While vampire stories have been part of popular culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has been in recent decades that they have become a central part of American culture. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture looks at how vampire stories—from Bram Stoker's Dracula to Blacula, from Bela Lugosi's films to Love at First Bite—have become part of our ongoing debate about what it means to be human. William Patrick Day looks at how writers and filmmakers as diverse as Anne Rice and Andy Warhol present the vampire as an archetype of human identity, as well as how many post-modern vampire stories reflect our fear and attraction to stories of addiction and violence. He argues that contemporary stories use the character of Dracula to explore modern values, and that stories of vampire slayers, such as the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, integrate current feminist ideas and the image of the Vietnam veteran into a new heroic version of the vampire story.

Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture

Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: William Patrick Day
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813153948
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book

Book Description
While vampire stories have been part of popular culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has been in recent decades that they have become a central part of American culture. Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture looks at how vampire stories—from Bram Stoker's Dracula to Blacula, from Bela Lugosi's films to Love at First Bite—have become part of our ongoing debate about what it means to be human. William Patrick Day looks at how writers and filmmakers as diverse as Anne Rice and Andy Warhol present the vampire as an archetype of human identity, as well as how many post-modern vampire stories reflect our fear and attraction to stories of addiction and violence. He argues that contemporary stories use the character of Dracula to explore modern values, and that stories of vampire slayers, such as the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, integrate current feminist ideas and the image of the Vietnam veteran into a new heroic version of the vampire story.

Vampire God

Vampire God PDF Author: Mary Y. Hallab
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438428588
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Examines the enormous popular appeal of vampires from early Greek and Slavic folklore to present-day popular culture.

Vampires

Vampires PDF Author: Peter Day
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042016698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Preliminary Material --Introduction /Peter Day --Legend of the Vampire --Getting to know the Un-dead: Bram Stoker, Vampires and Dracula /Elizabeth Miller --"One for Ever": Desire, Subjectivity and the Threat of the Abject in Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla /Hyun-Jung Lee --Sex, Death, and Ecstacy: The Art of Transgression /Lois Drawmer --The Name of the Vampire: Some Reflections on Current Linguistic Theories on the Etymology of the Word Vampire /Peter Mario Kreuter --The Discourse of the Vampire in First World War Writing /Terry Phillips --"Dead Man Walking": The Historical Context of Vampire Beliefs /Darren Oldridge --Vampire Dogs and Marsupial Hyenas: Fear, Myth, and the Tasmanian Tiger's Extinction /Phil Bagust --Vampires for the Modern Mind --Vampire Subcultures /Meg Barker --Embracing the Metropolis: Urban Vampires in American Cinema of the 1980s and 90s /Stacey Abbott --Piercing the Corporate Veil - With a Stake? Vampire Imagery and the Law /Sharon Sutherland --The Vampire and the Cyborg Embrace: Affect Beyond Fantasy in Virtual Materialism /James Tobias --Looking in the Mirror: Vampires, the Symbolic, and the Thing /Fiona Peters --"Death to Vampires!": The Vampire Body and the Meaning of Mutilation /Elizabeth McCarthy --The Un-dead: To be Feared or/and Pitied /Nursel Icoz --"You're Whining Again Louis": Anne Rice's Vampires as Indices of the Depressive Self /Pete Remington.

The Universal Vampire

The Universal Vampire PDF Author: Barbara Brodman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611475805
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Since the publication of John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse draugr, an "undead" creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula. In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions. The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire's beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.

American Vampires

American Vampires PDF Author: Linda R. Baker
Publisher: Enslow Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 1978513615
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
Most people today see vampires as entertaining supernatural creatures popularized by the many book, television, and movie series that abound in popular fiction, but where do these stories originate? Many cultures around the world have tales of undead blood-sucking creatures. Exploring these supernatural beings within the context of American historical accounts and legends will enable students to understand the relationship between the time in which such stories were believed and the actual events that inspired them. Accompanied by full-color images and sidebars with fascinating details, this volume will capture the interest of any student intrigued by vampire stories.

Blood Read

Blood Read PDF Author: Joan Gordon
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 9780812216288
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The vampire is one of the nineteenth century's most powerful surviving archetypes, owing largely to Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula, the Bram Stoker creation. Yet the figure of the vampire has undergone many transformations in recent years, thanks to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and other works, and many young people now identify with vampires in complex ways. Blood Read explores these transformations and shows how they reflect and illuminate ongoing changes in postmodern culture. It focuses on the metaphorical roles played by vampires in contemporary fiction and film, revealing what they can tell us about sexuality and power, power and alienation, attitudes toward illness, and the definition of evil in a secular age. Scholars and writers from the United States, Canada, England, and Japan examine how today's vampire has evolved from that of the last century, consider the vampire as a metaphor for consumption within the context of social concerns, and discuss the vampire figure in terms of contemporary literary theory. In addition, three writers of vampire fiction—Suzy McKee Charnas (author of the now-classic Vampire Tapestry), Brian Stableford (writer of the lively and erudite novels Empire of Fear and Young Blood), and Jewelle Gomez (creator of the dazzling Gilda stories)—discuss their own uses of the vampire, focusing on race and gender politics, eroticism, and the nature of evil. The first book to examine a wide range of vampire narratives from the perspective of both writers and scholars, Blood Read offers a variety of styles that will keep readers thoroughly engaged, inviting them to participate in a dialogue between fiction and analysis that shows the vampire to be a cultural necessity of our age. For, contrary to legends in which Dracula has no reflection, we can see reflections of ourselves in the vampire as it stands before us cloaked not in black but in metaphor.

The Vampire in Folklore, History, Literature, Film and Television

The Vampire in Folklore, History, Literature, Film and Television PDF Author:
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476620830
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.

How to Kill a Vampire

How to Kill a Vampire PDF Author: Liisa Ladouceur
Publisher: ECW Press
ISBN: 177041147X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Citing examples from folklore, as well as horror films, TV shows, and works of fiction, this book details all known ways to prevent vampirism, including how to protect oneself against attacks and how to destroy vampires. While offering explanations on the origins and uses of most commonly known tactics in fending off vampirism, the book also delves much deeper by collecting historical accounts of unusual burial rites and shocking superstitions from European history, from the “real” Serbian vampire Arnold Paole to the unique Bulgarian Djadadjii, a professional vampire “bottler.” It traces the evolution of how to kill the fictional vampire—from Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Hammer horror films beginning in the 1950s to Anne Rice’s Lestat and the dreamy vamps of Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries—and also celebrates the most important slayers, including Van Helsing, Buffy, and Blade. In exploring how and why these monsters have been created and the increasingly complex ways in which they are destroyed, the book not only serves as a handy guide to the history and modern role of the vampire, it reveals much about the changing nature of human fears.

The Science of Vampires

The Science of Vampires PDF Author: Katherine Ramsland
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780425186169
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
· Are any vampire myths based on fact? · Bloodsucking villain to guilt-ridden loner—what has inspired the redemption of the vampire in fiction and film? · What is Vampire Personality Disorder? What causes a physical addiction to another person’s blood? · Are there any boundaries in the polysexual world of vampires? · How could a vampire hide in today’s world of advanced forensic science? · What is the psychopathology of the vampire? · What happens in the brain of a vampire’s victim? Si...

The Black Vampyre

The Black Vampyre PDF Author: Uriah Derick D'Arcy
Publisher: Leamington Books
ISBN: 1914090063
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 83

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Book Description
WARNING! Contains moderate bloody violence against slavers and plantation owners!This pioneer vampire tale from 1819 spills revenge-cold blood as its narrator leads us through high gothic terror to radical outrage on the subject of slavery, reaching a blood-soaked conclusion dripping with 'biting' polemic vilifying the bankers who caused the economic recession of that same year.An anti-capitalist horror fable from 200 years ago, The Black Vampyre vilified the worst financial predation the capitalist world would ever see, decades before Karl Marx ― the enslavement of Africans in the New World.One dead man said no! And this is his story.The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo tells the affrighting tale of a slave who is resurrected as a vampire after being killed by his owner; the slave seeks revenge by stealing the owner's son and marrying the owner's wife. The anonymous writer D'Arcy sets the story against the conditions that led to the Haitian Revolution.First published in chapbook form in New York in 1819, this emancipatory tale from literary New York in the 1810s arguably dates the birth of horror as know it!This edition features a new introduction as well as extensive notes and a guide to literary allusions.