A brilliant, concise overview of the origins of contemporary vampire narratives by Prof, Roger Luckhurst of Birkbeck College, London. He traces the vampire story from the Eats European accounts in the eighteenth-century through Polidori, Varney the Vampire, ‘Carmilla’ and (inevitably) Dracula, to the current TV adaptation of Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Torro’s The Strain, showing how the latter subverts the anti-imigration tendencies in Dracula and suggests something more utopian.
If you enjoyed this, you might want to consider taking an intellectual look at vampire fiction through the ages and signing up for our course: Reading the Vampire: Science, Sexuality and Alterity in Modern Culture on the Modern Literary Cultures MA at the University of Hertfordshire. We study all the books mentioned here plus the early vampire theatre and contemporary YA fictions of the undead. There is still time to apply to begin in October.
