Reading the Vampire

by Ken Gelder

Insatiable bloodlust, dangerous sexualities, the horror of the undead, uncharted Trannsylvanian wildernesses, and a morbid fascination with the other' the legend of the vampire continues to haunt popular imagination.Reading the Vampire examines the vampire in all its various manifestations and cultural meanings. Ken Gelder investigates vampire narratives in literature and in film, from early vampire stories like Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire' tale Carmilla and Bram Stoker's Dracula, the most famous vampire narrative of all, to contemporary American vampire blockbusters by Stephen King and others, the vampire chronicles of Anne Rice, post-Ceausescu' vampire narratives, and films such as FW Murnau's Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula.Reading the Vampire embeds vampires in their cultural contexts, showing vampire narratives feeding off the anxieties and fascinations of their from the nineteenth century perils of tourism, issues of colonialism and national identity, and obsessions with sex and death, to the queer' identity of the vampire or current vampiric metaphors for dangerous exchanges of bodily fluids and AIDS.

Genres: Nonfiction, Vampires, Gothic, Academic, Research, Literary Criticism, Horror

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 9, 1994

Reviews

[Ape · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was... meh... good but it was lacking in something for me. And I don't know whether this was because I was expecting something from it that it wasn't about, or because it was lacking. This is a very academically written book, with a lot of referencing to other people's work, including the usual critiquing and either tearing it to shreds or saying why its great. And using lots of big words.

It's aim is to look at the vampire in popular fiction & media, and there are chapters on Bram Stoker, Byron and Polidori, Le Fanu - all that gothic romanticism - through to a few films, including Nosferatu, Hammar films (god bless Christopher Lee) and Bram Stoker's Dracula, and up through Ann Rice and some other female writers I've not heard of, and then what he refers to as "blockbusters" - Stephen King and some other writers I've not heard of. It was lacking in some ways with things that weren't his fault: Reading this today, you think there's a big chapter missing on the current angst-riddled americian teenager love affair with the vampire with things like Sarah Michelle Gellar Buffy and Twilight. And then more serious (for want of a better word) books such as Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. But this was copyrighted in 1994 and the man can't see in to the future so we'll let him off. And I appreciate that he can't include every single vampire book and film, but this was very North America and western Europe focused, and even I Am Legend didn't get much of a look in other than to mention that Hammar studio's script for this got rejected by censors even before they started filming. I didn't see the vampires so much in I Am Legend, but I am surprised the book didn't feature in this one.

Then to move back in time, I don't think he gave much/enough credit to folklore and even where old folk lore beliefs have cropped up in medieval writing. Because if this is supposed to be about the developement of the popular idea of the vampire over time, surely these things should be included. I'm no expert, but I do know that medieval vampires appears in the Icelandic sagas. And there's all that wealth of folklore. And then I didn't get much of a feeling of developement through this book, or even the consideration that the vampire we see in books and films today is heavily influenced by stuff such as Bram Stokers work - the gothic romanticised vampire - and a long far jump away from what people in the middle ages saw vampires as. And there wasn't as much as I'd hoped about how the era is using the vampire to voice something - such as in the middle ages it's to deal with superstition and to explain away natural phenomea that people couldn't explain at the time as they didn't have the scientific knowledge we have; or that these superstitions were picked up by the church as another way to control the masses; or that after that, when we know that vampies "don't exist" we use them to portray other anxieties in society - fear of death, spread of AIDS, what it is to be human etc etc etc.

But I may have been expecting the wrong things from what this book set out to be. So it is interesting to a point, but I wouldn't say it was the definitive guide.

[Amon♰ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read it for my final project at uni and it is great. Some of the themes are very interesting not only regarding vampire fiction, but also horror fiction as a concept. It was very helpful for my final project. However, almost half of the analysis of the book is only about Bram Stoker's Dracula, not leaving much room for other pieces of vampire fiction.

[Richard Andersson · Rating 2 out of 5]

4. Reading Dracula
p71 Dracula [is seen as] the ‘catalyst which awakens women’s desire.
5.Vampires and Cinema:
p86: Most people know about Dracula from fil rather than the novel.
p90: [T]he films rewriting of the novel [...] situates almost everything that happens under the umbrella of the Hollywood romance-genre.
p90: Dracula in Coppola’s film is a romantic and naturally cinematic hero who sweeps Mina off her feet.
p91 Two principal actors played Dracula; Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee
p91-92 Lee adopted the Lugosi Dracula’s elegance and charm, the sleek, back-brushed hair, the arched eyebrows, but dropped the foreign accent and underscored Dracula’s sexual attractiveness and ferocity.
p92: These films establish their own look through the principal actor which then stands as a constant point of reference for viewer recognition in those films and beyond them.
6. Vampires in the (old) New World
p109 [...] characteristics usually associated with women-s romance - [...] the the vampire’s search for fulfillment, for a ‘complete’ love relationship. But, under the umbrella of the vampire genre, romance themes may be dispersed or channeled through other topics of interest.
p109 Rice’s vampire chronicles in common with family saga genre, vampires cohibit with another in familial relationships. Her novels are more genealogical. Novel grounded in a coherent family structure.
p109 [The] male vampire protagonists - Louis, Lestat and Armand - are decidedly ‘queer’. Rice flaunts the gayness of her male vampires; they cohabit together as ‘queer’ parents, with vampire children.
p109 Rice perhaps first writer to narrate vampires in first person.
p110-111 pre-civil war New Orleans, a place where different ethnicities interact freely with another, class differences are dissolved. Vampire fiction genre tends to override class and ethnic differences at one level by emphasizing mobility and movement.
p111 Louis is a disillusioned catholic - perhaps he has seen too much of the world. Because of the traumatic disillusion he can see the reality of vampires. Since he believe in nothing, he can believe anything, e.g. there is no meaning to anything (see Rice, p241)
p111 Go to Europe to find truth about vampires, but in Transylvania they are ‘mindless’ animated corpses (Rice p192).
p112, no origin of vampirism, it is a mode of representation, a sign, a style or a posture. “To be a vampire is [..] to act like a vampire.”
p112 rejection of all european traditions, vampire lore - crosses, garlic, stakes, are untrue.
p112 Louis is delicate and sensitive, e.g. feminised (Rice p18?)
Some sections in the book:

[Vitani Days · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lettura interessante, divisa in capitoli diversi per tematiche e modo in cui viene affrontato l'argomento "vampiro". Si parte con un excursus di tipo storico/sociologico, con la riscoperta da parte dell'Occidente dei vampiri "primitivi" del folklore klore slavo fino al loro ascendere a divenire l'emblema per eccellenza dell'"altro" (sia esso comunista, ebreo, omosessuale o semplicemente donna); si prosegue con Byron e il modo in cui la sua figura ha ispirato e nutrito i vagabondaggi dei vampiri, veri esseri senza patria; si studia il perturbante di "Carmilla" e come abbia influenzato il mondo queer; vi è un'interessante lettura di "Dracula"; si esplora il cinema, si esplorano Anne Rice e gli altri media.
Un paio di nei: il fatto che il libro risalga al 1998 e manchino dunque tutti gli anni 2000 e il fatto che tenda a volte a essere troppo prolisso su particolari inutili, finendo purtroppo per sprecare prezioso spazio e annoiare il lettore con digressioni evitabili. (Un argomento come vasto come quello dei vampiri, probabilmente, non può essere affrontato per capitoletti. Diciamo che ogni capitolo avrebbe meritato un volume a parte.) Manca un po' di sistematicità.

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

An introspective exploration of the vampire on the page and on screen, beginning with some ethnographic explorations of Eastern Europe and Greece before moving on to the development of the vampire genre in the 19th century. Famous texts including Polidori's and Le Fanu's CARMILLA are examined, before a lengthier appraisal of DRACULA. Later chapters include screen vampires of the 20th century, Anne Rice's Lestat, and more modern works by novelists Dan Simmonds and SP Somtow. The author engages with various critical theories, including psychoanalysis and queer studies, to good effect, adding some depth to the texts and revealing the multiple ways in which each of his highlighted works can be read.

[Mikael Cerbing · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, quite academic look on the vampire history in books and movies. In many parts I found it to be a really good introduction to start thinking about a fun topic. But the authors wish to use freudian interpetations of a lot of topics pulled it down one star for me. But I still really enjoyed it.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

An academic treatment of vampires, this book is a relatively brief, but surprisingly comprehensive account of vampire readings from the Victorian period where it was just considered an amusing tale to today where we'll probably soon see the financial crisis being read into Dracula (joking, but not even far-fetched given the theme of immigrants and land purchase..).

Anyhow, it's a bit hard to rate academic books like this, particularly when there are some works that I haven't yet read. Obviously, Dracula takes up the most space, and the chapter on vampires and cinema is really good, but this is most of all a book to give you an overview of the vampire discourse in academic circles.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good insights in the first few chapters with regards to Dracula. But sadly, as with many books on the study of vampires, this one quickly disintegrated into 'vampires = weird sex".

If you like to read vampire fiction for just a laugh and wanted to delve a little deeper then this is probably a good start as it's quite general and easy to read.

However I read 'Reading the Vampire' as research for an academic essay and proposal, so I felt this lacked a certain 'unique selling point' in terms of point of view and content.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great critical study of classic and contemporary (up to the 90s) vampire works, and the theoretical framework that has allowed vampirism to be such an engaging book and film theme throughout the past 50 years. Various theories have been drawn upon to clarify the attraction of audiences to the ideas of biting, exchanging bodily fluids, atypical dependancy relationships between vampires and humans, and Queer theory structures.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting look into the world of vampires and vampire research. Some stuff seems a bit far-fetched or obscure, but in most of those cases the author simply tells that this or that has been said about vampires, so it's not his own opinions.

[Richard Cubitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read. It is a shame, however, that most modern vampire fictions have lost potency and become quite silly, or are aimed at a teen market.