A Study Of English Vampire Literature In The Nineteenth Century

The image of vampire has influenced the western culture for a long time. At theend of the eighteenth century, the vampire image began to appear in the literatureworks and became prevalent in the nineteenth century Britain. However, the largeamount of vampire literature created at that time has long been ignored by researchers.This article is intended to analyze the themes of these vampire literature in thebackground of the society of the nineteenth century Britain, combining text andhistory materials together.The whole thesis includes three parts. The first part contains the introductionand a brief outline of the development of vampire literature in the nineteenth centuryBritain. The main part of the article demonstrates three themes of the vampireliterature. First, the Britain residents represent the immigrants from eastern Europe，especially the Jews, as vampire in the novels, demonizing the image of the easterngroups, which is kind of propaganda aiming at provoking the British patriotism.Secondly, the tough relation between the aristocracy and middle class also reflects inthe vampire literature. This kind of literature is the self-packaging of the middle classmen. Thirdly, due to the zero tolerant of homosexuality in the nineteenth centuryBritain, the vampire serves as a metaphor of homosexuality. Some of these poems ornovels express the emotions of the homosexual author while the other aims to alienatethe gays and lesbians. What’s more, the lesbian vampire can be thought of the groupof women who hope to abandon the traditional duty. The last part discusses thepositions and attitudes of those works, indicating that the vampire literature issubversive for it rebuilds an aesthetic style of vampire and vampire literature while italso flatters the mainstream of the society.