by Carol A. Senf
University of Wisconsin Press, 1988
Paper: 978-0-87972-425-2 | eISBN: 978-0-299-26383-6 | Cloth: 978-0-87972-424-5
Library of Congress Classification PR468.V35S4 1988
Dewey Decimal Classification 823.809375

ABOUT THIS BOOK | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Carol A. Senf traces the vampire’s evolution from folklore to twentieth-century popular culture and explains why this creature became such an important metaphor in Victorian England. This bloodsucker who had stalked the folklore of almost every culture became the property of serious artists and thinkers in Victorian England, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. People who did not believe in the existence of vampires nonetheless saw numerous metaphoric possibilities in a creature from the past that exerted pressure on the present and was often threatening because of its sexuality.