Abstract
The purpose of this paper is a new approach from an interdisciplinary standpoint to the long lasting phenomena of the vampires. Consequently, I have drawn on from multiple sources in history, folklore, literary studies and anthropology. As monsters, they have been analysed in the light of their symbolic meaning. Previous studies place them in realms of mythical thinking and belonging to a liminal state of the nature-culture classification. As undead, their specificity is to trespass sides, a matter of fear for the living. Although we want to consider our civilization as rational and free from superstition, undead keep coming back through different narrative media. I will try to address that question by emphasising the liminality of death and the allure of immortality. The chosen case of research is Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and the film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). By comparing the changes in the characters and the plot I have tried to frame them as different versions along the history of a myth. Any social order need to set boundaries but, being humans, we are tempted to trespass at least through fiction.
References
Barber, P. (1988). Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality (New edition). Yale University Press.
Bartra, R. (1997). Wild Men in the Looking-Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness. University of Michigan Press.
Beresford, M. (2008). From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth (2nd edition). Reaktion Books.
Botting, F. (2005). Gothic. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203993767
Campbell, J. (1988). The Power of Myth. Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Cohen, J. J. (1996). Seven Theses. In J. J. Cohen (Ed.), Monster Theory: Reading Culture (First edition). Univ Of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctttsq4d
Coppola, F. F., & Hart, J. V. (1992). Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend. Newmarket Press.
Freud, S. (1950). Totem and Taboo. W.W. Norton.
Gerard, E. (1888). The Land Beyond the Forest: Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania (Vol. 1). W. Blackwood & Sons
Gilmore, D. D. (2003). Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812203226
Hallab, M. Y. (2009). Vampire God: The Allure of the Undead in Western Culture. State University of New York Press.
Hollinger, V. (1997). Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire. In J. Gordon & V. Hollinger (Eds.), Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture (First Edition, pp. 199–212). University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lévi-Straus, C. (1963). XI The structural study of myth. In Structural Anthropology. Basic Books.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966). The Savage Mind. The University Of Chicago Press.
Musharbash, Y. (2021). Monsters. In F. Stein (Ed.), Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. http://doi.org/10.29164/21monsters
Plato (2007). The Republic (D. Lee, Trans.; New edition). Penguin Classics.
Scott, L. (2013). Crossing oceans of time: Stoker, Coppola and the ‘new vampire’ film. In S. George & B. Hughes (Eds.), Open graves, open minds: Representations of vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the present day (pp. 113–130). Manchester University Press.
Senf, C. (2014). Dracula. In J. A. Weinstock (Ed.), The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters (1st edition, pp. 177–183). Routledge.
Stoker, B. (1897). Dracula. Archibald Constable and Company
Turner, V. (1974). Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology. Rice Institute Pamphlet – Rice University Studies, 60(3), 53–92.
Wolf, L. (1992). Dracula: The King Vampire. In F. F. Coppola & J. V. Hart, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend (pp. 166–169). Newmarket Press.
Wolf, L. (1997). Introduction. In L. Wolf (Ed.), Blood Thirst: 100 Years of Vampire Fiction (1st edition, pp. 1–10). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.4095/299321
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.