The Vampire in Context. From 1898 to 2012

Book excerpt: Vampires have been part of peoples’ folklore since the pre-history. Although they had meant different things and had different traits depending on the cultures, they appeared over and over again throughout various tales. In the beginning, the vampire used to be depicted as a bloodsucking, murdering monster, while more recently he became desirable, a heartthrob for which not only his fictive love interests fall, but also millions of readers who make vampire stories so popular in our time. Despite these radical changes, literary vampire stories have in common that most of them reflect on the social circumstances during their time of origin. The vampire is particularly suitable for the exemplification of sexuality. This term paper deals with the statement that the changes in sexuality and gender account for the changes in vampire stories. Chapter 1 will look at vampires in folklore to show the legitimacy of the vampire/sexuality connection, since these have been linked very early on. Chapters 2 and 3 give an overview over sexuality and gender in the Victorian age – the time in which the literary vampire first became popular – and how these topics are perceived today. Chapters 4 and 5 will explain how the circumstances are reflected in Victorian vampire literature and modern literature respectively.