Images of the Modern Vampire

Book excerpt: In the predecessor to this book, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend, Brodman and Doan presented discussions of the development of the vampire in the West from the early Norse draugr figure to the medieval European revenant and ultimately to Dracula, who first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The essays in that collection also looked at the non-Western vampire in Native American and Mesoamerican traditions, Asian and Russian vampires in popular culture, and the vampire in contemporary novels, film and television. The essays in this collection continue that multi-cultural and multigeneric discussion by tracing the development of the post-modern vampire, in films ranging from Shadow of a Doubt to Blade, The Wisdom of Crocodiles and Interview with the Vampire; the male and female vampires in the Twilight films, Sookie Stackhouse novels and TrueBlood television series; the vampire in African American women’s fiction, Anne Rice’s novels and in the post-apocalyptic I Am Legend; vampires in Japanese anime; and finally, to bring the volumes full circle, the presentation of a new Irish Dracula play, adapted from the novel and set in 1888.