The living dead : a study of the vampire in Romantic literature
James B. Twitchell (Author)
In 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
Criticism, interpretation, etc
1 online resource (219 pages) : illustrations
9780822398479, 0822398478
567802249
Introduction
The female vampire
The male vampire in poetry
The vampire in prose
The artist as vampire
Epilogue: D.H. Lawrence and the modern vampire
Appendix: Varney the vampire
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010