The bloodline of Dracula : a reworking of the vampire myth in literature

Abstract

The Vampire, rich figure in both folklore and literature, has appeared under various guises. He is metaphorically multiform. From soulless bloodsucking revenant to sullen and sensuous aristocrat bent on society's destruction, he is evil incarnate and incarnadine. Or so we have been led to believe up until as late as the nineteenth century, but even then the Romantics were fully aware of the ideological import of a character who shares with Byron more than his wild temperament. The steady evolution of the vampire myth from monster to man is symbolic of changing times and social values. The term itself 'symbolic' is significant. Once the stuff of peasant folklore and Victorian nightmares, the vampire's shape-shifting powers make him today a very interesting and flexible literary device. In this case, the vampire doubles up for an unlimited repertoire of symbolic associations by a process of literary and mythological accretion. This alone has conferred immortality to a figure which has drifted from myth to legendary status and back to myth again on account of his ubiquity and typecast roles.