I The Vampire in Literature and Arts
• Literature
o Due to literature being universal and being passed down through time, vampire legends have also been continued.
o Examples of Literature:
Euripides’s play “Hecube, The Odyssey,
Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus- Story of a greek sage including many apocryphal (skeptical but believed to be true) events.
Lamia by Keats- Used the subject involved in Apollonius’s story.
Phlegon of Tralles recorded vampire tales- Speaks about the return of a woman from the grave
o The most prolific period for Vamp Lit has been the last 2 centuries.
• The vampire fascination coincided with Romanticism
• Emphasis was put on the irrational, instinctual and emotional movements.
• Earliest work = Thalaba the Destroyer
Most important work of 19th century = The Vampyre
• Credited to Lord Byron but Polidori is the author
• The story became in immediate success and inspired many plays, poems, and stories.
• It inspired Varney the Vampyre which is the first story to have the vampire as a sympathetic figure doomed to life of the undead.
o Also, vampirism becomes infectious as it can be passed on to others
o During the second portion of the 19th century a movement in lit and art grew called “Decadence”
This style borrows from all vocabularies, styles, speech, thoughts. Unlike the classic style, this admit a “shadow.”
Examples:
• Carmilla (1871)- Includes lesbianism and the Varney sympathy
• Dracula (1897) - Stoker
Dracula (1897) - Stoker
o Involves all the legends and myths along with true history.
o Based on Vlad Tepes
o Eroticism is stressed in Dracula but just like in Carmilla is veiled by Victorian manners and convention.
o The novels enduring virtues lie in its immediacy, pacing, and in its power to evoke vivid moods.
o Into the 20th century there were changes made to Dracula
This includes vampire plants in H.G. Wells’s “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” and others.
o Today vampire literature is “pulp”(Examples Comic books, paper backs, and tabloids)
• The Formal Visual Arts
o Vampires do not occur in the formal visual arts of painting and sculpture with the regularity found in literature.
o Comic books
They have been marketed highly with vampire issues.
o There are Tshirts, posters, and even bottle caps with depictions of vampires.
• The Dramatic Arts
o J.R. Planché in London made “The Vampyre or the Bride of the Isles”
First appearance of the “vampire trap door”
o Polidori and his “The Vampyre” as said was big in Europe.
o Many satires resulted from dramatizations of vampire stories because many plays lacked such distinction as others.
o Stoker’s Dracula made it big in theatre
Henry Irving, Stoker’s mentor, helped make the play
• The play was originally 4 hours with 40 scenes
After Stoker’s death Hamilton Deane took the play and shortened it.
• It was highly successful in Europe and went quickly to U.S.
o Carmilla was put on stage by a E.T.C. Company of Café La Mama
o Media picked up on the Vampire themes created TV shows like the Munster.
Radio also had done a rendering of Stoker’s novel done by Orson Welles.
The Male Vampire
• The Vampire Figure
o Seductive, erotic, possessing, a hypnotic power are just some starting characteristics of a vampire.
o The dramatic interplay between the vampire and its lovers becomes a fusion of basic human instincts, not just self preservation but also self destruction
o Vampires have a superhumaness about them that has become kind of an emblem.
o “The vampire is, like Satan, a ruthless stalker of men, attaining the life-blood of the body through the soul, possessing its lover in all senses of the word by instilling a cupidity for love and death in the mind of its object and simultaneously fulfilling it.”
• Narrative and visual conventions
o Vampire films are set over the last 150 years.
Therefore you see --> Victorian cities with gas-lit , cobblestoned avenues and alleyways alternating with country manors and mountainous castles.
Also, special affects are possible in film so bullets can go through vampires and they can metamorphose into other things, etc.
• Dracula
o Count Dracula according to Stoker
He is the epitome of the male vampire
A nobleman, just as Bela Lugosi played the role.
The accent
Dark clothes, cape, brushed back hair, crimson lips, and eerie smile, and of course long canines.
• Nosferatu
o 1922
o He resembles a giant bat with an oversized head, sunken eyes, a beak like nose, crooked teeth, and tufts of white hair.
o The ending to the movie: Mina keeps the vampire with her until after the sunrise where he dies from sunlight striking him and she dies too due to the rule in the “Book of the Vampire” saying someone will be sacrificed.
o One addition from Stoker’s plot in the book is that the vampire is killed by sunlight. In the novel the vampire could go out having only slight impairment.
*Thanks John Merrick*
• Literature
o Due to literature being universal and being passed down through time, vampire legends have also been continued.
o Examples of Literature:
Euripides’s play “Hecube, The Odyssey,
Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus- Story of a greek sage including many apocryphal (skeptical but believed to be true) events.
Lamia by Keats- Used the subject involved in Apollonius’s story.
Phlegon of Tralles recorded vampire tales- Speaks about the return of a woman from the grave
o The most prolific period for Vamp Lit has been the last 2 centuries.
• The vampire fascination coincided with Romanticism
• Emphasis was put on the irrational, instinctual and emotional movements.
• Earliest work = Thalaba the Destroyer
Most important work of 19th century = The Vampyre
• Credited to Lord Byron but Polidori is the author
• The story became in immediate success and inspired many plays, poems, and stories.
• It inspired Varney the Vampyre which is the first story to have the vampire as a sympathetic figure doomed to life of the undead.
o Also, vampirism becomes infectious as it can be passed on to others
o During the second portion of the 19th century a movement in lit and art grew called “Decadence”
This style borrows from all vocabularies, styles, speech, thoughts. Unlike the classic style, this admit a “shadow.”
Examples:
• Carmilla (1871)- Includes lesbianism and the Varney sympathy
• Dracula (1897) - Stoker
Dracula (1897) - Stoker
o Involves all the legends and myths along with true history.
o Based on Vlad Tepes
o Eroticism is stressed in Dracula but just like in Carmilla is veiled by Victorian manners and convention.
o The novels enduring virtues lie in its immediacy, pacing, and in its power to evoke vivid moods.
o Into the 20th century there were changes made to Dracula
This includes vampire plants in H.G. Wells’s “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” and others.
o Today vampire literature is “pulp”(Examples Comic books, paper backs, and tabloids)
• The Formal Visual Arts
o Vampires do not occur in the formal visual arts of painting and sculpture with the regularity found in literature.
o Comic books
They have been marketed highly with vampire issues.
o There are Tshirts, posters, and even bottle caps with depictions of vampires.
• The Dramatic Arts
o J.R. Planché in London made “The Vampyre or the Bride of the Isles”
First appearance of the “vampire trap door”
o Polidori and his “The Vampyre” as said was big in Europe.
o Many satires resulted from dramatizations of vampire stories because many plays lacked such distinction as others.
o Stoker’s Dracula made it big in theatre
Henry Irving, Stoker’s mentor, helped make the play
• The play was originally 4 hours with 40 scenes
After Stoker’s death Hamilton Deane took the play and shortened it.
• It was highly successful in Europe and went quickly to U.S.
o Carmilla was put on stage by a E.T.C. Company of Café La Mama
o Media picked up on the Vampire themes created TV shows like the Munster.
Radio also had done a rendering of Stoker’s novel done by Orson Welles.
The Male Vampire
• The Vampire Figure
o Seductive, erotic, possessing, a hypnotic power are just some starting characteristics of a vampire.
o The dramatic interplay between the vampire and its lovers becomes a fusion of basic human instincts, not just self preservation but also self destruction
o Vampires have a superhumaness about them that has become kind of an emblem.
o “The vampire is, like Satan, a ruthless stalker of men, attaining the life-blood of the body through the soul, possessing its lover in all senses of the word by instilling a cupidity for love and death in the mind of its object and simultaneously fulfilling it.”
• Narrative and visual conventions
o Vampire films are set over the last 150 years.
Therefore you see --> Victorian cities with gas-lit , cobblestoned avenues and alleyways alternating with country manors and mountainous castles.
Also, special affects are possible in film so bullets can go through vampires and they can metamorphose into other things, etc.
• Dracula
o Count Dracula according to Stoker
He is the epitome of the male vampire
A nobleman, just as Bela Lugosi played the role.
The accent
Dark clothes, cape, brushed back hair, crimson lips, and eerie smile, and of course long canines.
• Nosferatu
o 1922
o He resembles a giant bat with an oversized head, sunken eyes, a beak like nose, crooked teeth, and tufts of white hair.
o The ending to the movie: Mina keeps the vampire with her until after the sunrise where he dies from sunlight striking him and she dies too due to the rule in the “Book of the Vampire” saying someone will be sacrificed.
o One addition from Stoker’s plot in the book is that the vampire is killed by sunlight. In the novel the vampire could go out having only slight impairment.
*Thanks John Merrick*
