Vampiri și vampirism. Autopsia unui mit

by Claude Lecouteux

Pe baza cercetarii. unui impresionat corpus de documente din arhivele judiciare germane, franceze, austro-ungare etc., autorul analizeaza credintele despre viata buna si viata rea, despre moartea buna si moartea rea, despre predispozitia de a deveni strigoi sau vampir, metodele de protectie, procedeele oficiale de dezhumare, de identificare si de nimicire a vampirilor – inclusiv din spatiul etnic romanesc – dand explicatii stiintifice, medicale, teologice si sociologice asupra fenomenului.
Ne aflam în fata unei lucrari deschizatoare de drumuri, nu numai pentru intelegerea vampirismului în sine, ci si a mitologiei si credinselor superstitioase în genere.

Genres: Vampires, Nonfiction, Folklore, History, Mythology, Reference, Occult

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Docteur en études germaniques, docteur en lettres, est médiéviste. Il a occupé la chaire de Langues, Littératures et civilisations germaniques à l'université de Caen de 1981 à 1992 avant d'être appelé à la Sorbonne (Paris IV) pour occuper celle de Littérature et Civilisation allemande du Moyen Âge jusqu'en octobre 2007. Ses axes de recherches sont: Les êtres de la mythologie populaire, Les croyances touchant aux morts et à la mort, Les mythes, contes et légendes, La magie
Ses travaux lui ont valu de recevoir le Prix Strasbourg en 1982, un prix de l’Académie française la même année, d'être fait Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes académiques en 1995 et Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres en 2006. Jusqu'en décembre 2010, il dirige la revue La grande Oreille, arts de l’oralité et collabore à plusieurs revues sur le Moyen Âge.

Reviews

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autors būdams lingvists, kurš pamatā pēta vidusslaiku tekstus, pievēršas vampīru mīta izpētei. Interesanta nodaļa par vampīru paniku, kas saistīta ar dažādu slimību izplatīšanos, jo kas gan vainīgs, ja sāk slimot ciemata iedzīvotāji - noteikti nesen apglabāts aizdomīgs tipāžs. Izrādās vēl 20. gs. sākumā piefiksēti gadījumi, kad atrakti kapi, lai mirušo nogalinātu vēlreiz.

[Barb]

I usually hate marking textbooks as 'books read' on my Goodreads but fuck it, I'm not reading actual fiction because I have to work on my master thesis and I haven't read a proper book because of it in more than a month

Plus they're vampire books, which means they're at least interesting

[Lucija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opsežno i objektivno obrađena vampirska mitologija s komparacijom kroz različite kulture. Veliki bonus je što su dani "stvarni" primjeri.
Zato, ako vam je netko umro u čudnim okolnostima, beware.

[ivana]

četvrti dio serijala u kojem zapravo čitam knjige koje imam na policama

ova nije toliko dugo kupila prašinu u sobi pa ni ne čudi da sam ju progutala u par dana. uvijek mi je čudno davati zvjezdice knjigama koje nisu fikcija i to se stvarno rijetko događa pa ću se i tu suzdržati i samo fokusirati na ostatak.

knjiga daje sustavnu analizu vampirskog mita, ali ne s fokusom na književne vampire- iako se konstantno povlače paralele s njima i naglašava se da su oni zaslužni za uspon krvopija u opći fenomen današnjice - nego na njihove folklorne manifestacije. autor obrađuje, između ostalog, sve od živih predispozicija za postankom vampirom, samim procesom preobrazbe, konstrukcijom bića i napokon načinom oslobađanja od njih, tj. njihovim ubijanjem. kroz opsežnu analizu konkretnih primjera susreta sa vampirima i bićima sličnim njima u povijesnim zapisima, ocrtava se činjenica da je mit o mrtvom predatoru već stoljećima prisutan u ljudskoj svijesti. zanimljivo je bilo čitati o različitim opisima bića koja prethode klasičnom drakuli današnjice, a opet možeš uloviti crte koje će s vremenom dovesti do njega i mislim da se autor tu stvarno izvukao sa energičnom prozom iz crvotočine pukih nabrajanja ovog i onog čudovišta dok jadni čitatelj ne zaspi ispred knjige. ne možeš baš o ovakvoj temi pisati u nekom komičnom traktatu, ali ima nešto duše iza njegove proze, a i svaka mu čast na razlikovanju svih 300 vrsta povratnika jer su razlike nekad toliko banalne da se moraš nasmijati.

nema smisla nabrajati sve informacije koje su mi bile zanimljive, ali jedno što ću izdvojiti je povezanost vampira, vještica i vukodlaka; koliko puta čuješ o toj monstruoznoj povijesnoj trifekti kao distinktivnim bićima, a tu ispada da ne samo da su njihovi začeci usko povezani nego da je i prestanak lova na jedne navuklo na istrebljenje drugih. izgleda da ljudi uvijek trebaju odabrati nekog kao utjelovljenje zla i njegovim umorstvom pročistiti zajednicu. neke stvari se stvarno nisu bitno izmijenile u nama od vremena kada smo se bojali vlastite sjene i nismo znali za bakterije.

summa summarum, vrlo vrlo dobra knjižica za sve koji su zainteresirani za folklorne početke onog što stvorenja koje će na kraju postati vampir lestat, claudia i louis.

[Merewyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! I did not know there were so many historical writings about the beliefs people had about vampires and revenants! A delicious read for anyone who delights in reading the works of Anne Rice and Bram Stoker. :) Or for any history or old literature fan as well ;)
A word to the wise here, this IS a Scholarly take on the historical writings about vampires - so it can run dry for some who do not care to read dusty professors ideas.
For me, though, this was utterly delightful since I've been a vampire fan-girl from my teeny-bopper years ;) (Yep, Anne Rice, Bram Stoker, L.J. Smith, and Christopher Pike were in my teenage book repertoire back in the day.)
So this is certainly a fun romp through history :)
I would recommend this book for those who love vampires and who love history. :)

[Dorotea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This perhaps isn't a book I would pick up normally, but I had to reference it for my MA thesis. And I'm glad I did. The book brings a really interesting historical account on vampires and their influence on foklore, culture and popular culture. The book lays out everything clearly and uses many references for the accounts of vampirism it mentions.

The stories are interesting and the author is really knowledgeable on the topic. All this makes for an interesting pop-science account of this phenomena and I really had fun reading it.

I read this in Croatian translation and I think the translator did a great job in managing to keep the author's whimsy tone and correct terminology and facts.

[eli · Rating 3 out of 5]

era de 4/5 daca nu adormea editorul si nu lasa miliarde de typos + l**** tax

[Lala_laurelin]

Great👍

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #Vampire-Nosferatu Non Fiction

Back in 2012, when my fascination with vampire lore was at its peak, I stumbled across Claude Lecouteux’s The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes on Amazon.

At the time, it felt like discovering a secret archive, the kind of book that promised to go deeper than the glittery vampires of pop culture or even the Gothic archetypes of Dracula and Carmilla. Lecouteux, a medievalist with a penchant for tracing folklore through its historical sediment, approaches the vampire not as a creature of horror fiction but as a cultural phenomenon—an ancient symbol whose shapes and meanings have shifted across centuries and geographies.

What pulled me in immediately was how Lecouteux dismantles the idea of the vampire as a single, stable figure. Instead of treating it as a monster born in 18th- or 19th-century Europe, he excavates older strata—Slavic revenants, Norse draugar, shadow-souls in Roman and Greek traditions, even echoes in Indian and Near Eastern mythologies.

The vampire becomes less a figure of supernatural evil and more a vast, shifting metaphor for anxieties about death, disease, sexuality, and the porous boundary between the living and the dead. Reading this, I was struck by how different this was from the Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer vampires dominating shelves. Lecouteux insisted on multiplicity, on seeing the vampire as something society invents again and again to name its fears.

Another fascinating angle was his insistence on the vampire as a liminal being, existing not just to terrify but to regulate. Many of the traditions he uncovers suggest that vampires, or revenant-like beings, serve as warnings, as boundary markers for communal ethics. The vampire is the other who breaks burial laws, who violates kinship, who destabilizes the fragile balance between worlds.

In some traditions, the vampire was not simply a predator but a kind of hidden enforcer of taboo, punishing transgression by embodying it. Lecouteux’s reading of “hidden purposes” reframes vampirism not as random supernatural malice but as a cultural instrument, a story communities told themselves to protect against dissolution.

Reading this, I was both thrilled and slightly overwhelmed. The book is not written in the lush, Gothic prose of vampire novels; it is scholarly, heavily annotated, and dense with sources. At times, it felt more like reading a map of buried mythologies than a smooth narrative. However, that was also its charm: it forced me to slow down, to see the vampire as a node in a web of folklore rather than as a single creature stalking across novels and films.

It also broadened my sense of literary genealogy. Bram Stoker suddenly appeared less as an originator and more as a transmitter of much older, darker folk-memories, stitched together for a Victorian readership.

Looking back, finding Lecouteux’s book on Amazon in 2012 feels almost quaint—the algorithm delivering to me a text that, ironically, exposed the much deeper, pre-digital algorithm of human fear and imagination.

My fascination with vampire lore has shifted since then, but this book remains a turning point: the moment when vampires stopped being just romantic monsters and became, instead, mirrors of cultural unease.

Lecouteux convinced me that the vampire’s “secret history” is not about the undead at all—it is about us, the living, endlessly inventing forms to carry our dread, our desire, and our fragile attempts to understand death.

[Danny R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gustó.
El desarrollo del mito del vampiro, no como un camino recto y rígido sino como algo que depende de muchos factores; creencias, épocas, situaciones sociales, etc.

Hace referencia a recuentos de eventos concretos 'reales', según fueron consignados en distintos documentos, no solo de la influencia de la literatura en el desarrollo del mito. Hay un juego en cómo la realidad percibida alimenta a la literatura y viceversa, aunque el libro se centra más que nada en la realidad percibida.

[demin ✧˖*°࿐ · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it!! minus one star cuz it didnt help me as much as i thought it would with my thesis.

KIDDING!!! i did find it a fascinating read in spite of the little i can actually use when writing my paper. as a vampire nerd, i appreciated the detail and the inclusion of the "real" vampire encounters / stories of encounters and, as a slavic person, i also appreciated the cultures it focused on. i did however rate it only 4 stars (more like 3.5 though) because i thought a lot of information was repeated? at some point, reading it felt like being in a loop unfortunately

[Hunter Headapohl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this up at a vampire bar in New Orleans. This book surprised me with its mix of primary sourcing and academic rigor on a subject that has been reinterpreted so many times. An excellent read for anyone interested in the historicity, folklore, and primary source accounts of pre-Dracula “vampires”.

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich fühle mich nun ausgiebigst informiert.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sounded really interesting and I do love my vampires, however, this read like an awful and EXTREMELY boring term paper. At least it helped me sleep for a few nights....unfortunate :/

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a few years ago. Enjoyable exploration of vampire folklore and legend.

[Neala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved how it talks about different types of vampires.

[Mariana Pesce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Não achei que ia demorar tanto pra terminar um livro de 200 e poucas páginas. Algumas partes são interessantes, outras são sofridas pra ler. No geral até que valeu a pena.

[Irka · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's interesting, mainly focused on two sources - books by Stoker, Le Fanu, Polidori and ethnography of Poland, Romania and Czech Republic.

[Kim Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Plus axé anthropologie et histoire culturelle que littérature et mythe de Dracula, ce livre fascinant nous montre ce qu'on a inclus dans la catégorie "vampire", et comment les gens ont réagi.

[Abi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed it! It was a very in-depth review of where the entire idea of vampires comes from. It was very well done, and helped me understand vampires much better.

[Dielleina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful

[Steve Cran · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Undead have been among us for centuries if not millennium. Upon the death of a community member it was common practice to make sure that all the funeral rites were performed properly and that the dead were given their proper respect, or else they would come back. The Dead live even after their bodies stop functioning. A more generic term would be revenant, which was a corpse that came back from the dead.

The vampire is just another breed of revanent.Revants have been with us since prehistoric times. Now vampires are known for coming out only at night, drinking people's blood and shape shifting. but there is more to it. Who usually became a vampire upon their death. Legend and lore say that usually suicides, sinners, witches, werewolves and those born with a caul around them would become vampires when they died. Vampire are notorious for haunting their local village after they have died and usually they claim those that were closest to them. There were several ways of stopping the vampire or killing it. The most popular way was to cut off the vampire's head and place it at the feet of the corpse. Of course you would drive a wooden stake through it heart first. Some times the corpse would be burned and the ashes would be strewn into the river. Sometimes someone who had been victimized by vampire would need to drink the ashen water in order to recover.

There were several types of vampires. the summoner would call peoples name and those that were called ended up dying. The knocker did the same thing by knocking on your door and nonicide killed 9 people before stopping. The chewer ate his clothes and each time he ate his clothes someone would die. There is also the famished who was eternally hungry. Sounds a lot like zombies.

Fear of vampires was especially prevalent in the 18th century especially after the witch craze died down. The fear of vampires is alive even unto this day. People, especially in Slavic countries, will still nail coffins shut with iron nails, execute corpses and even dress themselves with garlic. One man in America even choked in his sleep on a piece of garlic. He kept garlic in his mouth to protect himself from vampires. To stop a vampire from rising from it's grave the village people employed a few strategies. One was to stuff the mouth with garlic or earth. Another such strategy was to bury the corpse face down. An old strategy was to cut off the head and leave it by the feet. When people went to destroy vampires they usually found them well fed, their blood fresh and the corpse really well preserved.

Scientists have looked for ways to explain the vampire myth. Mythologist have looked for answers in the myths. Th author makes the argument that the vampire or revanent is actually an astral double. The astral double explains the shape shifting ability and it's ability to get in through cracks and small places. It also explains why it leaves no reflecting. One way to stop a vampire was to plug up a whole in it's grave or in the house it was haunting.

This book is an excellent book for those who wish to learn about vampires. The author does a thorough investigation of legend and lore and explains it in simple terms to the reader. Very short and very thorough. I definitely want to read more of his works.

[Timothy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had read Phantom Armies of the Night years before and loved it so I bought several of his books from my local used bookstore when they showed up. This book wasn't as fun as the previous, but it did have the history I was looking for. The info is solid, it just kind of feels like a shot at making off with some of the money from the vampire craze a while back. Could have done with less of a comparison with modern takes on vampires. That said, it still makes a worthy edition to any folklore shelf of your personal library.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really informative read if you're interested in "the truth" about vampires. It gets to the mythology of the vampire and of similar revenants and dissects the origins of certain aspects of the modern myth.
A bit dense and hard to read a lot of it in a row, but definitely worth-while for those who are interested in the truth.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as the work of Dundes or Barber, but a good introduction.

[Melanie's · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book and now want to get some of the 18th centruy books referenced, preferably in the original French. Wish me luck lol V""V

[Red]

egt d

[Diana Padilla]

Where i can buy this book?

[MSC]

I was inspired by What We Do in the Shadows.