Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film

The first study to propose a unifying logic underlying the many and varied representations of the vampire in literature and culture. For the last three hundred years, fictions of the vampire have fed off anxieties about cultural continuity. Though commonly represented as a parasitic aggressor from without, the vampire is in fact a native of Europe, and its "metamorphoses," to quote Baudelaire, a distorted image of social transformation. Because the vampire grows strong whenever and wherever trad