The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic LiteratureIn his Preface to The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature, James Twitchell writes that he is not interested in the current generation of vampires, which he finds "rude, boring and hopelessly adolescent. However, they have not always been this way. In fact, a century ago they were often quite sophisticated, used by artists varied as Blake, Poe, Coleridge, the Brontes, Shelley, and Keats, to explain aspects of interpersonal relations. However vulgar the vampire has since become, it is important to remember that along with the Frankenstein monster, the vampire is one of the major mythic figures bequeathed to us by the English Romantics. Simply in terms of cultural influence and currency, the vampire is far more important than any other nineteenth-century archetypes; in fact, he is probably the most enduring and prolific mythic figure we have. This book traces the vampire out of folklore into serious art until he stabilizes early in this century into the character we all too easily recognize. - Book Jacket. |
From inside the book
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Page 4
... vampire myth's ability to explain neurotic love . In The Vampire : His Kith and Kin , Montague Summers , a controversial Jesuit , was critically ham- pered by his own literal belief in vampires , which caused many problems , not the ...
... vampire myth's ability to explain neurotic love . In The Vampire : His Kith and Kin , Montague Summers , a controversial Jesuit , was critically ham- pered by his own literal belief in vampires , which caused many problems , not the ...
Page 10
... vampire might possess the body after death . This would occur in the rare case when the vampire actually attacked and success- fully transformed the victim into another vampire . This doppelgänger process is surely one of the myth's ...
... vampire might possess the body after death . This would occur in the rare case when the vampire actually attacked and success- fully transformed the victim into another vampire . This doppelgänger process is surely one of the myth's ...
Page 12
... vampire's victim , who accompanies the vampire killer on the quest . In the modern cinematic version of the story the vampire - destroyer is usually a doctor , often a hematologist , who aids the young man with his medical knowledge and ...
... vampire's victim , who accompanies the vampire killer on the quest . In the modern cinematic version of the story the vampire - destroyer is usually a doctor , often a hematologist , who aids the young man with his medical knowledge and ...
Contents
The Female Vampire | 39 |
The Male Vampire in Poetry | 74 |
The Vampire in Prose | 103 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature James B. Twitchell Limited preview - 1981 |
The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature James B. Twitchell,Twitchell No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
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