The Vampire
An Edinburgh Companion
Edited by Nick Groom, William Hughes
- Surveys the vampire from accounts of eighteenth-century folklore to its significance within present day culture
- Contemplates the vampire as a global and still-developing phenomenon through reportage, medicine, religion, poetry, literary and graphic fiction, and cinema
- Responds not merely to recent representations of the vampire in fiction and cinema but also to developments in theory from Queer studies to postcolonialism
The Vampire: An Edinburgh Companion examines the recurrent figure of the vampire from its folkloric origins, through eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, to those twentieth- and twenty-first century innovations that have disseminated the un-dead across global popular culture. Through a systematically commissioned range of original essays, this volume offers an unequalled overview of both the textual and critical fields, advancing a challenging reassessment of the canonical and uncanonical un-dead in fiction, poetry, reportage, cinema and comic art. Interdisciplinary and international in conception, it interrogates not merely the enduring literary presence of the vampire but also the physical and spiritual implications of vampirism, tracing its conventions beyond Europe and the United States into Asia. This volume is an essential summary of representations of the vampire and how they help us contemplate victimhood, morality, mortality and human identity.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Nick Groom & William Hughes
Part I. The Vampire: Its Persistence and Change
1. Pathology, Physiology, and the Undead: Medicine, Misdiagnosis, and Vampire Fiction
William Hughes
2. The Literary Vampire in the Long Eighteenth Century
Nick Groom
3. Victorian and Edwardian Vampires: Environments, Empire, and Extractivism
Joan Passey
4. The Paradigm of Dracula: 100 Years of Evolution
Carol A. Senf
5. Undead Disclosures: Twentieth-Century Vampire Literature
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
6. Unearthing the Female Vampire Across the Centuries
Carol Margaret Davison
Part II. Vampire Narratologies
7. Evil Undead, Shining Immortals: Vampires and Religion
Victoria Nelson
8. Ethical Family Planning: Contemporary Queer Literary Vampires
Ardel Haefele-Thomas
9. The Undead in America
Jillian Wingfield
10. The Invention of ‘Asian Vampires’ in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Culture
Andrew Hock Soon Ng
11. Dealing with the Dead: Vampires, Corpses, and Serialisation
Jarlath Killeen
12. The Vampire Cinema
Jeffrey Weinstock
13. Vampirism and the Graphic Narrative
Richard J. Hand
14. Sur-vampire: Theory, Matter, Metaphor
Fred Botting
Notes on Contributors
Index
This Companion gathers an impressive cabal of leading Gothic scholars to extend and enrich the project of embedding the enduring figure of the vampire into a range of contexts. From medicine, folklore, anthropology, theology to the specific cultural histories of literature and film, Nick Groom and William Hughes have created a compelling snapshot of the current state of the field. Essential reading.
