Vampire literature
The literary vampire first appeared in 18th-century poetry, before becoming one of the stock figures of gothic fiction with the publication of Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), inspired by a story told to him by Lord Byron.
One of its lines, Denn die Todten reiten schnell ("For the dead ride fast"), was to be quoted in Bram Stoker's classic Dracula.
She relapses into death upon being exposed, and the issue is settled by burning her body outside of the city walls and making an apotropaic sacrifice to the deities involved.
Byron also composed an enigmatic fragmentary story, published as "A Fragment" in 1819 as part of the Mazeppa collection, concerning the mysterious fate of an aristocrat named Augustus Darvell whilst journeying in the Orient—as his contribution to the famous ghost story competition at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in the summer of 1816, between him, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley and John William Polidori (who was Byron's personal physician).
According to A. Asbjorn Jon, "the choice of name [for Polidori's Lord Ruthven] is presumably linked to Lady Caroline Lamb's earlier novel Glenarvon, where it was used for a rather ill disguised Byronesque character".
[5] An unauthorized sequel to Polidori's tale by Cyprien Bérard called Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires (1820) was attributed to Charles Nodier.
Nodier's play was also the basis of an opera called Der Vampyr by the German composer Heinrich Marschner, who set the story in a more plausible Wallachia.
Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) is suspected of being a vampire by his housekeeper at one point, which he immediately laughs off as "absurd nonsense".
Fascinating erotic fixations are evident in Sheridan Le Fanu's classic novella Carmilla (1872), which features a female vampire with lesbian inclinations who seduces the heroine Laura while draining her of her vital fluids.
Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession), with its undertones of sex, blood, and death, struck a chord in a Victorian Britain where tuberculosis and syphilis were common.
[9][10][11] Unlike the historical personage, however, Stoker located his Count Dracula in a castle near the Borgo Pass in Transylvania, and ascribed to that area the supernatural aura it retains to this day in the popular imagination.
The first of these was Gothic romance writer Marilyn Ross's Barnabas Collins series (1966–71) loosely based on the contemporary American TV soap opera Dark Shadows.
King's repertoire often hybridizes traditional vampire folklore with the coy charm inspired by Bela Lugosi's performance while increasing the physical violence, carnage, and overall butchery.
[17][18] The 1981 novel The Hunger (adapted as a film in 1983) continued the theme of open sexuality and examined the biology of vampires, suggesting that their special abilities were the result of physical properties of their blood.
The 1982 novel Fevre Dream by notable author George R. R. Martin tells the tale of a race of living vampires, extremely human-like but obligate predators on humans, set in the Mississippi Riverboat era, where one of them has developed a dietary supplement to "cure" them, and is fighting for the right and opportunity to distribute it.
It tells of Yosef the Peddler who wanders a great East European forest and encounters a lonely house inhabited by a mysterious lady named Helen.
The occult detective subgenre is represented by Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files fantasy series (2000–), and Charlaine Harris's The Southern Vampire Mysteries (2001–).
He is also currently writing a prequel to the Saga, a series of four books all about Larten Crepsley (one of the main characters) starting with Birth of a Killer (2010) and finishing with Brothers to the Death (2012).
Dimitris Lyacos's second book of the Poena Damni trilogy With the People from the Bridge handles the vampire legend in the context of a ritualistic post-theatrical drama performance.
[23] The story is recounted in a minimalist style that makes no explicit mention to vampires, the undead, graves or the Underworld, conveying, nevertheless, the underlying theme unambiguously and in striking physical detail.
[24] Peter Watts' novel Blindsight has explored a scientific basis for vampires, depicting them as an evolutionary offshoot from humanity who were not the dominant species on the planet solely due to an evolutionary glitch making them averse to Euclidean geometry (right angles cause seizures in what is called "Crucifix Glitch", leading to them dying out when modern technology with all its structures swept the world).
One particularly important vampire trait is their ability to hibernate for extended periods of time, which makes cryogenic stasis possible and is applied to astronauts via gene-therapy.
Vampires in the Twilight series (2005–2008) by Stephenie Meyer ignore the effects of garlic and crosses and are not harmed by sunlight, although it does reveal their supernatural status.
It is also notable in the novel that Dracula can walk about in the daylight, in bright sunshine, though apparently in discomfort and without the ability to use most of his powers, like turning into mist or a bat.
For instance, Anne Rice's vampire Lestat and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain both avoid the lethal effects of daylight by staying closeted indoors during the day.
This is also featured in the American TV series True Blood, where Sookie withdraws her invitation on a number of occasions, causing vampires to be thrown out by supernatural forces.
Other examples include a fifth season episode of the X-Files titled Bad Blood, and the Discworld novel, Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett.
Also, in the Twilight series, certain vampires appear to have special gifts like Edward (telepathy), Alice (visions), Bella (shielding), that are either supernatural or evolved from their own personalities like Victoria (survival instinct).
[55] Proinsias Cassidy, the supporting lead male in Garth Ennis' comic book series Preacher (DC/Vertigo, 1995), is a vampire of Irish origin.
In 2009, Zuda Comics launched La Morté Sisters, a story of teenage vampirism in a Catholic orphanage taking place in South Philadelphia.
