The Mythology Of Vampires From The Past

Have you ever thought to yourself, what has influenced vampire literature today? Well, neither have I, but it wouldn’t hurt to touch on the subject. Dracula introduces the idea of lust and death within vampirism. Also, there are many connections that I make throughout this essay between Dracula and I am Legend, proving that Dracula was an influence on the book. The opposition of Dracula has had great influences on vampire literature.We see that these two pieces of literature are so much similar than one would think. Both authors even use similar words to describe the similar things, which I hadn’t even noticed until I made further inspection. .The book Dracula, written by

They shun the light and crave the taste of blood. The mere thought of them could make a grown man tremble. But what if a vampire wasn’t just a horrific creature of the night? What if they were completely human, enabling them to hide in plain sight? Wouldn’t that make them more dangerous? Due to popular Gothic literature, vampires are commonly romanticized to be pale bloodsuckers that hide in the dark, waiting for their next meal. This version of a vampire makes them easy to spot in literature, but is also very limiting in that it only lends itself to that specific genre. However, a different version, laid out by Thomas Foster, shows how anyone, whether they be fictional or nonfictional, can be considered a vampire through analysis of

which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a winged

With Halloween being right around the corner, children are preparing for ABC’s “Thirteen Nights of Halloween,” parents are picking up pumpkins to celebrate the Celtic holiday, and the urge for a good horror story is emerging. The monster, such as vampires or zombies, is taking the spotlight and it’s hard to ignore. From Dante’s Inferno to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, being frightened has not only been one of people’s favorite pastimes, but a way for us to explain the paranormal and unrevealed. In recent times however, there seems to be a shift from demonic creatures of the night to over sexualized human-like creatures who hide amongst us in the day. In this essay, I will show the gradual humanizing of the vampire and how it has morphed from a demonic creature damned by God into a creature with a big heart that is not much different from us.

Ever since my middle school friend introduced me to Twilight, I have been obsessed with vampires. With my obsession came a need to share my interest with other people. After my friends got sick of listening to my constant chatter about vampires, I turned to my mom to talk about my interest. When I told my mom about modern day vampires, she laughed and told me that the creatures I was talking about were not vampires. She said that vampires are bloodthirsty evil beings that are not handsome and certainly not sparkly. Through my conversation with my mother, I found out that the views of vampires have changed greatly throughout generations. I found that cultural and societal changes that occur throughout history has changed our image and perspectives of vampires.

This is the main aim of this investigation - to identify and discuss the factors which influenced the constantly changing literary and cultural depiction of vampires. What turned the symbol of threat and horror into a mysterious outsider?

“” this is the definition of folklore, and from these stories we get a multitude of myths and speculation of what happens to us when we die. They range from just disappearing into nothingness to becoming a higher being or going into a higher plain of existence. There are ideas however, of a life on this earth after we die for those who have committed crimes or have not been buried properly, we become the other, the supernatural or ultimately the undead. The most common of which is the vampire. One of the most known vampires from literature is Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ (1897) who is portrayed as a blood thirty, emotionless monster, which is the idea most often portrayed in folklore. This is a stark contrast from Anne Rice’s (1976) portal of a “” . The traditional idea of a monstrous creature who haunts the night is seen as an old idea and that people’s views of the supernatural are changing to a more humane, beautiful creature, not of a demon. This could be due to the popularity in teen and young adult fiction that happened in the late 1900’s. This change from traditional folklore is due to “” the way we perceive things are changing due to the influence of different cultures and ideas. Most of our ideas of vampires have changed from the traditional views to a beautiful human creature: seen in ‘Twilight’, ‘Vampire Knight’, ‘Vampire Academy’, and ‘Anita Blake’. These novels do have some elements of the monster portrayed in ‘Dracula’ and folklore but the main characters are the

The vampire is not by any means a new manifestation of the fears of a society. Their presence in human culture can be traced back for centuries in human folklore. The first Anglicized representations of the creature in literature date back to the English poetry of the early 1700s, and were then followed in the fiction genre by such works as John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. For the audiences of the 18th century, vampires embodied many of the following common fears shared between the people: of illness, both mental and epidemic, of an embraced sexuality, particularly that of women’s and homosexuals’, and of foreigners. As the archetypical vampire evolved throughout the

“Folklore vampires often convey important social messages in that their undead condition is regarded as a penalty for mental, physical, or behavioral

People have always and will always be affected by the infamous vampire. “Norine Dresser, a folklorist at UCLA also wrote a book at that time called American Vampires in which she documented vampire images in the media and described the effects on people who claimed to be vampires. She sent out a questionnaire, and out of 574 respondents, 27 percent admitted to a belief in vampires” (Ramsland 65). Certain individuals would file their teeth into a razor-sharp weapon, sleep in coffins, avoid the sun, and dress entirely in black. Some people would even form small groups to exchange blood in secret. Sadly enough, people would go too far to become their fictitious character. Known as “Lust Murders,” people would kill in order to get a sexual pleasure as a vampire would. In 1827, a moody 24 year old vine dresser named Leger killed a 12 year old girl in the woods. He admitted that he drank her blood, mutilated her genitals, tore out and ate a part of her heart, and then buried her remains. When he was questioned about his horrific event, he talked with no emotion or remorse. Two other “Lust Murders” comprise of a man cutting his arm for his wife to suck on before sex because it would arouse his wife so strongly. The second is “a man dissected his victims and got so caught up in the gore that he trembled with the desire to wallow in it and consume it” (Ramsland 105).

The first record of vampires’ undead activity was in Sebia (Butler 77). The local inhabitants’ lives were uneasy, because they were confused about their identities and what they should follow (Butler 77). In this circumstance, vampire myth appeared to express the society’s anxiety by their irregularities, such as upsetting healthy sexuality and destroying normal patterns of reproduction (Butler 78). Places like back alleys and hidden recess provide opportunities for vampires to gain their powers and their exotic influence

The generalization for vampires has been displayed in films and literature for hundreds of years. The stereotypical versions of vampires are that they have long fangs, sleep in coffins during the day, and suck the blood out of humans. Both novels contradict those stereotypes in different ways. To understand the diversity of the vampires described in both novels, one must examine the characteristics that the vampires display and the meaning and purpose behind them. David D. Gilmore’s book “Monsters” analyzes monsters and other mythical creatures. Gilmore describes why humanity invented the idea of

Vampires have aroused a perennial fascination within humanity since their fictional materialization into history. However, it is over the course of the last century that these creatures have become an iconic symbol of mystifying horror and inexplicable desire. Recently, the vampire has undergone a significant reconstruction of physical appearance, behaviour, and surroundings, along with, extensive modifications to its super-natural disadvantages. These distinct character adaptations are imperative when considering two of the most notable vampires ever fashioned: Count Dracula and Edward Cullen. The dissimilarity between Bram Stoker’s 19th century, Count Dracula, and Stephenie Meyer’s 21st century, Edward Cullen, is a complex reflection of the contrasting societies from which these vampires emerged.

Tuberculosis, also known as “consumption” was a lethal disease that started spreading rapidly from family to family in parts of New England in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, not much was known about the disease in those times, leading people to start to suspect that vampires were the cause of the deaths. In an effort to protect their families and community, some people resorted to old-folk remedies, rooted from Europe. They exhumed the bodies of deceased relatives who died of consumption and checked to see if they had “fresh,” circulating, liquid blood in their hearts, which would indicate that the deceased had become a vampire. They believed that one of the relatives was not completely dead and was “draining” the life of his living relatives by stealing their blood and essentially placing it in his own corpse’s heart. In order to stop further spread of the disease, once it is discovered which of the deceased had become a vampire, the corpse’s vital organs such as his heart and lungs are removed and burned to ashes. Burning the heart to ashes fastens the drying of the fresh, liquid blood, which kills the vampire for good in the process. Additionally, many believed that consuming the vampire’s burned ashes acts as a cure for the living relatives that are infected with consumption (Bell 124-140).

The legend of the vampire has emerged countless times within human imagination over the past few centuries. The first available representation of the mythical creature in prose fiction can be found in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1810). It was not until eight decades later that Bram Stoker popularized the existence of this figure with the publication of “Dracula” in 1897. The folklore of the vampire has come a long way since and can be found in today’s popular media more frequently than ever before. However, with due course of time, the representation of the creature has taken alternate routes and today’s vampires are noticeable different – socially and physically – from their predecessors. One effective path to trace this