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.
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"Twitchell offers us, through his study of the vampire as a psychological device of Romanticism, a number of stimulating and even startling interpretations of well-known works. In what is perhaps the most rewarding chapter, we are shown how vampirism can be a metaphor of artistic creation itself."
--The Modern Language Review
--The Modern Language Review
About the Author
James B. Twitchell is Alumni Professor of English at the University of Florida.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Twitchell has an itch,
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This review is from: The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Paperback)
This book is very good. Twitchell mentions every major work of Romantic vampirism and with most of them does a very good job presenting the scholarly trends surrounding each work as well as his own analysis. However, Twitchell seems to be making some interpretations simply because he wants to distinguish himself, rather than to further understanding of the works. For example, he explains that some scholars have viewed Madeline as a vampire in "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. Some other scholars have viewed Roderick as the vampire and others have argued that it is the House itself that is the vampire. Twitchell makes the argument that the narrator is the vampiric force in the work, without taking into account the fact that Madeline had been exhibiting symptoms of being attacked by a vampire long before the narrator's arrival and the deterioration of Roderick had begun long before the arrival of the narrator as well. His argument was weak and it sounded like he just wanted to throw something out there that had never been tried before just for the hell of it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Useful Guide to Literature,
By Ishtar (Pokemon-land) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Paperback)
This is one of the best guides for romantic periode vampire literature. It is very useful to the casual reader of this genre. The information found in this book is very in detail. Some of the books listed in this are worth checking out.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
it's what you expect in literary criticism,
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This review is from: The Living Dead: A Study of the Vampire in Romantic Literature (Paperback)
It's a little dry and heavy on the psychology which was a popular literary device for reviewing horror nearly 30 years ago when this was written. I couldn't imagine picking this up for fun. It's for a vampire genre class I'm taking and I'm not sure I agree with his conclusions but that's the whole fun of literature classes, the different interpretations
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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lamia myth, vampire analogy, vampire motif, vampire myth, vampire superstition, sacred fount, leech gatherer, vampire theme, vampire story, male vampire, artist manqué, vampire attack, vampire lore, vampire stories, belle dame sans merci Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Dorian Gray, Wedding Guest, The Oval Portrait, Henry James, John Polidori, Bertha Rochester, Van Helsing, Lord Byron, Bram Stoker, May Server, Oxford University Press, Wuthering Heights, Byronic Hero, Charlotte Brontë, Montague Summers, Stoker's Dracula, The Rainbow, Viking Press, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Ruthven, Lyrical Ballads, Mario Praz, Coleridge's Christabel New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
lamia myth, vampire analogy, vampire motif, vampire myth, vampire superstition, sacred fount, leech gatherer, vampire theme, vampire story, male vampire, artist manqué, vampire attack, vampire lore, vampire stories, belle dame sans merci Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Dorian Gray, Wedding Guest, The Oval Portrait, Henry James, John Polidori, Bertha Rochester, Van Helsing, Lord Byron, Bram Stoker, May Server, Oxford University Press, Wuthering Heights, Byronic Hero, Charlotte Brontë, Montague Summers, Stoker's Dracula, The Rainbow, Viking Press, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Ruthven, Lyrical Ballads, Mario Praz, Coleridge's Christabel New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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30
books
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- Ancient Mariner Pb (Phoenix 60p paperbacks) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on 17 pages
- Women in Love: Cambridge Lawrence Edition (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) by D. H. Lawrence on 8 pages
- Women In Love by D. H. Lawrence on 8 pages
- The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales (Signet Classics) by Edgar Allan Poe on 7 pages
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde on 6 pages
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- Dracula (Penguin Classics) by Bram Stoker in Front Matter (1), and Front Matter (2)
- Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy) by James Craig Holte on page 95, and Back Matter
- Satire and Romanticism by Steven E. Jones in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Catholicism, Sexual Deviance, and Victorian Gothic Culture (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture) by Patrick R. O'Malley in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Dracula: Bram Stoker (New Casebooks) by Glennis Byron on page 67, and page 198
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