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Vampire fiction covers the spectrum of literary work concerned principally with the subject of vampires.

Nineteenth Century

The best known work in this genre is, of course, Bram Stoker's gothic novel Dracula. It was not, however, the first. Myths and legends of blood-imbibing creatures capable of transmogrification predate the novel form. The immediate antecedent of Dracula is Sheridan le Fanu's classic of the genre, Carmilla. This in turn owes more than a little to John William Polidori's The Vampyre; this was contemporaneous to Lord Byron's poem The Giaour, which also deals with the subject. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Christabel (written between 1797 and 1801, but not published until 1816) does not involve blood-drinking, but can easily be viewed as a "vampire tale".

Lord Byron introduced many common elements of the vampire theme to Western literature in his epic poem The Giaour (1813). These include the combination of horror and lust that the vampire feels and the concept of the undead passing its inheritance to the living (Note: In the following excerpt, corse is "corpse"):

But thou, false Infidel! shalt writhe
Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe;

And from its torment 'scape alone
To wander round lost Eblis' throne;
And fire unquenched, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!

But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:
Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
And suck the blood of all thy race;

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,
At midnight drain the stream of life;
Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
Must feed thy livid living corse:
Thy victims ere they yet expire
Shall know the demon for their sire,
As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

Byron's own wild life became the model for the protagonist Lord Ruthven in the first vampire novel, The Vampyre (1819) by John William Polidori. Polidori's Lord Ruthven seems to be the first appearance of the modern vampire, an undead, vampiric being possessing a developed intellect and preternatural charm, as well as physical attraction. By contrast, the vampire of folklore was almost invariably thought of as a hideous, unappealing creature.

An unauthorized sequel to Polidori's novel by Cyprien Bérard called Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires (1820) was adapted by Charles Nodier into the first vampire stage melodrama, which was in turn made into an opera by German composer Heinrich Marschner.

Turn of the Century

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) has been the definitive description of the vampire in popular fiction for the last century. 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. A decade before in 1888, the press had sensationalized Jack the Ripper's sexualized murders of prostitutes during his reign of terror in East London.

Dracula appears to be based at least partially on legends about a real person, Vlad Ţepeş (Vlad the Impaler), a notorious Wallachian (Romanian) prince of the 15th century known also as Vlad III Dracula. Stoker also probably derived inspiration from Irish myths of blood-sucking creatures. He also was almost certainly influenced by a contemporary vampire story, Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu. Le Fanu was Stoker's editor when Stoker was a theatre critic in Dublin, Ireland.

Twentieth Century

Much 20th-century vampire fiction draws heavily on Stoker's formulation; early films such as Nosferatu and those featuring Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee are examples of this. Nosferatu, in fact, was clearly based on Dracula, and Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement and won. As a result of the suit, most prints of the film were destroyed. She later allowed the film to be shown in England.

Though most other works of vampire fiction do not feature Dracula as a character, there is typically a clear inspiration from Stoker, reflected in a fascination with sex and wealth, as well as overwhelmingly frequent use of Gothic settings and iconography. A contemporary descendant is the series of novels by Anne Rice, the most popular in a genre of modern stories that use vampires as their (sometimes sympathetic) protagonists.

Prior to the mid-1950s, vampires were usually presented as supernatural beings with mystical powers. Discussion of the transmission of vampirism was sketchy at best. This changed with the publication of I Am Legend by author Richard Matheson in (1954). The story of a future Los Angeles, overrun with undead cannabalistic/bloodsucking beings changed the genre forever. One man is the sole survivor of a pandemic of a bacterium that causes vampirism. Continually, he must fight to survive attacks from the hordes of nocturnal creatures, discover the secrets of their biology, and develop effective countermeasures. This was the first piece of fiction with an analytical slant towards Vampires. The 1981 novel and 1983 film The Hunger also examined the biology of Vampires, followed by a variety of contemporary authors.

Literature

Films and television

Vampires have been a film staple since the silent days. The Vampire (film) (1913, directed by Robert G. Vignola), also co-written by Vignola, is the earliest vampire film. The landmark Nosferatu (1922 Germany, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau) was an unlicensed version of Dracula based so closely on Bram Stoker's Dracula, the estate sued and won, with all copies being destroyed. (It would be painstakingly restored in 1994 by a team of European scholars from the five surviving prints.) By 2005, Dracula had been the subject of more films than any other fictional character.

The treatment of vampires has been kaleidoscopic. It has been comedic, including Old Dracula (1974 UK, directed by Clive Donner) featuring David Niven as a lovelorn Drac, Love at First Bite (1979 USA) featuring George Hamilton and Dead and Loving It (1995 USA, directed by Mel Brooks) with Canadian Leslie Nielsen giving it a comic twist, to absurd, with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Vampirism has changed from embodied evil in Dracula to a kind of virus in David Cronenberg's Rabid (1976 Canada) and Red-Blooded American Girl (1990 Canada, directed by David Blyth). It got an SF spin in The Last Man on Earth (Italy 1964, directed by Ubaldo Ragona) and The Omega Man (1971 USA, directed by Boris Sagal), both based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (writing as Logan Swanson), the product of a biological war. Race has not been excluded, either, as exemplified by the blaxploitation picture Blacula (1972 USA, directed by William Crain) and several sequels.

Killing vampires has changed, too. Where Abraham Van Helsing relied on a stake through the heart, in *] (1997 USA, directed by John Carpenter), Jack Crow (James Woods) has a heavily-armed squad of vampire hunters, and in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992 USA, directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui), writer Joss Whedon (who created TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spinoff Angel) attached The Slayer, Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson in the film, Sarah Michelle Gellar in the TV series), to a network of Watchers and mystically endowed her with superhuman powers.

Murnau's Nosferatu (portrayed by Max Schrek) was ancient-looking and ugly, as he was expected to be at that time. The vampire was transformed from a creature of disgust and fear into an object of lust, in such films as Camilla (released as La Maldicion De Los Karnstein, 1963), Daughters of Darkness (released as Children Of The Night, 1971), Dracula (1979), and Once Bitten (1985), for just a few examples. Delphine Seyrig, Frank Langella, or Lauren Hutton could hardly be called ugly. Even X-rated films (such as 1978’s Dracula Sucks and 1999's Hot Vampire Nights) have used vampire themes.

In 2002, Shadow of the Vampire (2000 UK/USA/Luxembourg, directed by E. Elias Merhige) starred Willem Dafoe as leading man Max Schrek, playing an actual vampire, and John Malkovich as a harassed Murnau. Dafoe's character is the ugly, disgusting creature of the original Nosferatu.

Dracula and his legacy

By far, the most well-known and popular vampire in the movies is Dracula. An amazing number of movies have been filmed over the years depicting the evil count, some of which are ranked among the greatest depictions of vampires on film. Dracula has over 160 film representations making him the most frequently portrayed character in horror films; he has the second-highest number of movie appearances overall, following only Sherlock Holmes.

Other movies and television

Other media

Video game series featuring vampires primarily use Dracula or Dracula-inspired characters. Konami's Castlevania series is the longest running series which uses the Dracula legend, though its writers have made their own alterations to the legend. An exception to this trend is the Legacy of Kain video game series, which features vampires set in an entirely fictional world called Nosgoth.

Other vampires seen in games include:

  • The Elder Scrolls game series involves vampires created by demon lord. They have all the typical attributes, but some (though not all) can walk in sunlight if they have fed on a victim.
  • In the tabletop wargame Warhammer Fantasy: Vampire Counts are one of the playable forces.
  • Role-playing games such as The Masquerade (1992), in which the participants play the roles of fictional vampires (for specifics, see vampires in the World of Darkness).
  • The Darkstalkers (1994) fighting game series (known as Vampire Savior in Japan) features a vampire along with other mythological and horror-themed characters.
  • Shadowrun features vampires whose existence is explained by a resurgance of the Human Meta-Human Vampiric Virus. As such, the afflicted are not undead, but instead are still alive but radically changed by the retrovirus. They normally do not suffer from the supernatural limitations such as crosses, but still are vulnerable to sunlight.
  • Nightlife, the second expansion pack for popular series The Sims 2, features vampires as that expansion's unique lifeform (the others being alien and zombie). The vampires in this game follow many conventions, such as they sleep in ornate coffins, wear gothic clothing and can transform into bats. Controllable sims can be turned into vampires if bitten by one, and returned to normal by means of a magic potion. If caugth outside during the day, their needs quickly plummit until the vampire dies.

In addition to gaming, vampires populate other popular cultural media, including graphic novels, comics, theater and musicals:

Traits of vampires in fiction

In contrast to the numerous and contradictory beliefs about vampires in traditional folklore (see vampire), the Western literary tradition has seen the rise of a more or less unified image of the vampire, combining certain folkloric traits and losing others, which has spread to modern cinema and popular culture in general. The fiction of the XIX century, especially Bram Stoker's Dracula, has been formative. Fictional vampires may be romantic figures, they are sometimes elegant and sexy (compare demons such as succubus and incubus), and vampirism as such acquires distinct sexual aspects. Nowadays, a well-known set of special "powers" and weaknesses is commonly associated with them:

  • Vampires, being already dead, do not need most normal things required for human life, such as oxygen. They often have a pale appearance (rather than the ruddy skin of folkloric vampires), and are cool to the touch from the perspective of humans.

  • As in folklore, fictional vampires are sometimes considered to be shape-shifters.

  • Some vampires can fly. Sometimes this power is supernatural, other times it is connected to the vampire's ability to turn into flying creatures (e.g., bats, owls, flies) or into lightweight forms (e.g. straw, dust, smoke) and then create winds as a means of propulsion.

  • Vampires cast no shadow and have no reflection. In modern fiction, this may extend to the idea that vampires cannot be photographed.

  • Some tales maintain that vampires must return to their native soil before sunrise to take their rest safely. Others place native soil in their coffins, especially if they have relocated. Still other vampire stories such as Le Fanu's Carmilla maintain that vampires must return to their coffins, but sleep in several inches of blood as opposed to soil.

  • Vampires in some tales have very specific dietary requirements while others do not. However, most tales of the undead feature vampires that cannot eat (or at least cannot gain nourishment from) normal human food. In most cases they sustain themselves by sucking living people's blood or life force; this seems to be a requirement for their continued existence regardless of whether they are able to absorb other food and drink, or gain anything from such.

  • Werewolves are sometimes held to become vampires after death, and vampires are frequently held to have the ability to transform themselves into wolves. Other fiction, however, holds werewolves to be the mortal enemies of vampires.

  • Also as in folklore, a vampire may be destroyed by means of a consecrated bullet, a wooden stake through the heart, decapitation, or incinerating the body. In some non-folkloric tales, a vampire is killed simply by exposure to daylight. This idea, parallelled in legends about other creatures such as trolls, was first applied to vampires in the 1922 film Nosferatu.

Sources

  • Christopher Frayling - Vampyres: Lord Byron to Count Dracula (1992) ISBN 0571167926
  • Holte, James Craig. - Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations. Greenwood Press, 1997.
  • Freeland, Cynthia A. - The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press, 2000.
  • Melton, J. Gordon. - The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Visible Ink Press, 1994.

External links

Vampires

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Vampire fiction".

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