The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature

In his Preface to The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature, James Twitchell writes that he is not interested in the current generation of vampires, which he finds "rude, boring and hopelessly adolescent. However, they have not always been this way. In fact, a century ago they were often quite sophisticated, used by artists varied as Blake, Poe, Coleridge, the Brontes, Shelley, and Keats, to explain aspects of interpersonal relations. However vulgar the vampire has since become, it is important to remember that along with the Frankenstein monster, the vampire is one of the major mythic figures bequeathed to us by the English Romantics. Simply in terms of cultural influence and currency, the vampire is far more important than any other nineteenth-century archetypes; in fact, he is probably the most enduring and prolific mythic figure we have. This book traces the vampire out of folklore into serious art until he stabilizes early in this century into the character we all too easily recognize.

Author: James B. Twitchell
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 09/08/1987
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.91lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.08w x 0.66d
ISBN: 9780822307891

About the Author

James B. Twitchell is Alumni Professor of English at the University of Florida.