The Vampire in Nineteenth Century English LiteratureUniversity of Wisconsin Pres, 2013 - 212 pages Carol A. Senf traces the vampire’s evolution from folklore to twentieth-century popular culture and explains why this creature became such an important metaphor in Victorian England. This bloodsucker who had stalked the folklore of almost every culture became the property of serious artists and thinkers in Victorian England, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. People who did not believe in the existence of vampires nonetheless saw numerous metaphoric possibilities in a creature from the past that exerted pressure on the present and was often threatening because of its sexuality. |
Contents
Blood Eroticism and the TwentiethCentury Vampire | 1 |
The Origins of Modern Myth | 17 |
The Vampire as Gothic Villain | 31 |
Suspicions Confirmed Suspicions Denied | 75 |
Myth Becomes Metaphor in Realistic Fiction | 94 |
Making Sense of the Changes | 140 |
Notes | 165 |
Bibliography | 194 |
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Common terms and phrases
argues become behavior belief Bertha Mason Bleak House blood Bronte Bronte's Bulstrode Carmilla Catherine century Chancery chapter characteristics Charlotte Bronte creature culture death destroy destructive Dickens Dickens's Dracula economic Emily Bronte emphasizes English Esther evil example fact feminine feminist figure focuses folklore Frayling Furthermore George Eliot Gothic literature Gothic novel Harker Heathcliff Helsing heroine horror individual influence Jane Eyre Jane's kind Laura LeFanu Linton literally literary vampire lives Lord Ruthven Lucy Lucy Westenra Lydgate marriage married metaphor Middlemarch monsters Moreover mysterious narrator nineteenth nineteenth-century literature Nonetheless observes ordinary human parasitic Polidori popular reader relationship responsible reveals Rochester role romantic Rosamond sexual social society Stoker story sucking suggests supernatural traditional twentieth twentieth-century Twitchell vampire from folklore vampire in nineteenth-century vampire motif vampire's vampiric character Van Helsing Varney Varney the Vampire victims Victorian Vincy violence woman women vampires writers Wuthering Heights York