Open graves, open minds : representations of vampires and the undead from enlightenment to the present day / edited by Sam George and Bill Hughes.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

George, Sam, Dr., editor.

Hughes, Bill, editor.

Series:

Manchester Gothic (Manchester, England).

Manchester Gothic

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vampires in literature.

Vampires on television.

Vampire films--History and criticism.

Vampire films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 314 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The Open Graves, Open Minds project discussed in this book relates the undead in literature, art and other media to questions concerning gender, technology, consumption and social change. The story of vampires, since their discovery in eighteenth-century Europe, is one of transformations and interbreedings of genre, which mediate shifts in ways of knowing and doubting. It is marked by metamorphoses of the vampire itself, from monstrous to sympathetic, but always fascinatingly Other. Certain tropes, such as optical figures, and particularly that of reflection, recur throughout, calling attention to the preoccupation with epistemology in vampire narratives. The book focuses on various aspects of these themes as the story unfolds to the present day. It shows how the persona of Lord Byron became an effective vehicle for the vampire of fiction as a transformed Gothic mode, and grapples with the figure of the non-reflecting vampire who casts no shadow, moving deftly between Dracula and Wilde's Dorian Gray and the 'vampire painting' and installations of the contemporary artist David Reed. The book gives a luminous account of early vampire cinema as a 'Kingdom of shadows', and explores the undead at the interface, where knowing becomes problematic: 'unsettlement'. The book also unearths the folklore roots of vampire fiction and offers a glimpse of how contemporary writers adapt the perennial figure.

Contents:

1. Introduction / Sam George and Bill Hughes

2. The deformed transformed; or, from bloodsucker to Byronic hero: Polidori and the literary vampire / Conrad Aquilina

3. Sheridan Le Fanu's vampires and Ireland's invited invasion / Julieann Ulin

4. 'He make in the mirror no reflect': undead aesthetics and mechanical reproduction : Dorian Gray, Dracula and David Reed's 'vampire painting' / Sam George

5. The vampire as dark and glorious necessity in George Sylvester Viereck's House of the Vampire and Hanns Heinz Ewers's Vampir / Lisa Lampert-Weissig

6. The undead in the kingdom of the shadows: the rise of the cinematic vampire / Stacey Abbott

7. Crossing oceans of time: Stoker, Coppola and the 'new vampire' film / Lindsey Scott

8. 'I feel strong. I feel different': transformations, vampires and language in Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Malgorzata Drewniok

9. Gothic Charm School; or, how vampires learned to sparkle / Catherine Spooner

10. A vampire heaven: the economics of salvation in Dracula and The Twilight Saga / Jennifer H. Williams

11. The Twilight Saga and the pleasures of spectatorship: the broken body and the shining body / Sara Wasson and Sarah Artt

12. The postmodern vampire in 'post-race' America: HBO's True Blood / Michelle J. Smith

13. Myriad mirrors: doppelg angers and doubling in The Vampire Diaries / Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

14. The vampire in the machine: exploring the undead interface / Ivan Phillips

15. 'Legally recognised undead': essence, difference and assimilation in Daniel Waters's Generation Dead / Bill Hughes

16. The elusive vampire: folklore and fiction: writing My Swordhand is Singing / Marcus Sedgwick.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 10 Jul 2026).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 276-300) and index.

ISBN:

9781526102164

1526102161

9781526102157

1526102153

OCLC:

960166179