The vampire as we know it today is a reproduction of the folkloric vampire (Robinson 1). The myth of the supernatural being which returns from the grave to feed on the humans’ blood is as old as the world and appears in many different cultures (Guiley 353). Chinese legends, for example, told of “blood-sucking creatures that were green, covered with mould, and which had a propensity to glow in the dark”, Africans feared creatures as the asambosam, which were believed to suck blood through the thumbs of the sleeping (Leatherdale 17). Creatures as the Greek and Roman succubi, female demons which seduced young men in their sleep, and sucked their blood until the victims died, were phenomena of the Middle Ages and can be seen as precursors to the European vampire which inspired literary versions of the bloodsuckers. The developments of corporeal structures and of sexual predilections were elementary for the transformation into the European vampire (Leatherdale 18). The previous mentioned creatures are only a small selection of folkloric vampires and according to Christopher Frayling it is nearly impossible to trace the origins of vampire superstitions exactly, because of their huge occurrence and variety. But the roots of the vampire of modern Western fiction can more easily be accessed (5).
It is the folklore of Eastern Europe which holds the key to vampire fiction in Western Europe and America (Robinson 1–2). In such tales vampires are “dead people who cannot rest quietly in their graves, but leave them in order to attack and kill the living members of their community, through either suffocation or sucking their blood” (Robinson 1). In the 18th century a huge number of vampire epidemics occurred in Eastern Europe (Frayling 4). Reports of such epidemics appeared in the Western press and described cases in which families or communities suffered from numerous inexplicable deaths attributed to people who had returned as living dead (Hallab 18). The case which attracted the most interest was that of Arnold Paole in 1731-32 (Frayling 20). It occurred at Medvegia, in Serbia and was investigated and reported by a team under the supervision of Field Surgeon Johannes Fluckinger (Frayling 20). It was reported that several people had recently died in the area and the public ascribed these deaths to a man named Arnold Paole, who had died from a broken neck more than five years ago. Twenty or thirty days after his death a number of people had been tormented by him and four others had perished. The people reported that Paole had told that he had been bitten by a Turkish vampire, during his military service in the east (Brown 97). Paole had tried to cure himself by eating earth from the vampire’s grave and rubbing himself with the vampire’s blood (Polidori xx). When his grave was opened his corpse was found to be perfectly preserved, his flesh had not decomposed, and fresh blood was flowing from his ears, nose, and eyes. Because such phenomena were supposed to be usual in cases of vampirism, it was concluded that Paole was an arch-vampire. With this proof they used the accustomed method and drove a stake through his heart. As this happened Paole gave a great shriek and a great quantity of blood spurted out of his body. Afterwards the body was burned and the ashes returned to his tomb and the same method was applied to his victims. The report of the case caused a huge sensation in Europe, and aroused a lot of efforts to understand the nature of such incidents (Hallab 19). For a long time such vampire epidemics did not arose great attention and were often regarded as ignorant superstitions of uneducated peasants in rural villages. But as the accounts increased, scientists, as well as the Catholic Church became interested and sent investigators to the affected regions, to examine if there was truth in the stories about vampires (Hallab 18–19). Christopher Frayling believes the accounts of investigators, as Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, or Dom Augustine Calmet, as very important and “crucial stimuli to the success of the vampire genre in the nineteenth century” (Frayling 19). It is clear that the European vampire epidemics had an impact on the vampire in English literature, because England had no native tradition of vampires (Senf, The Vampire 20). Polidori, in his introduction of The Vampyre, directly refers to the folklore of Eastern Europe and the accounts of Tournefort and Calmet, which confirms the truth of this assumption (Polidori xix–xxiv). But the impact was no direct one and it took more than a century until the vampire entered English literature (Senf, The Vampire 20). Senf and Frayling both state that the main influence on English vampire fiction came from Germany. The large number of philosophical and scientific treatises about vampire epidemics inspired many literary treatments of the figures, especially in Germany (Senf, The Vampire 21). The bloodsuckers particularly attracted the German Romantics, and the “inarticulate peasant vampires” described by Calmet and Tournefort were transformed into the “aristocratic hero-villains” of romantic poetry (Frayling 5–6). Literary vampires firstly appeared in Romantic poems as Burger’s Lenore (1773), and Goethe’s The Bride of Korinth (1797) and were represented as seducers and rebels against Christian faith (Brugger 234–235). The Romantics did not use vampires to frighten, but to entertain and enlighten. As a result the images of vampires changed and no longer had much in common with their folkloric predecessors (Leatherdale 46–47). This was the first transformation of the vampire, and the results of these changes lasted through works as The Vampyre and Dracula. As a conclusion the sources of 19th century English literary vampires can be summarized to “folklore, eighteenth century German literature, and scientific discussions of primitive beliefs” (Senf, The Vampire 23).
Vampires also appeared in British romantic poetry but their real breakthrough happened in prose in John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1816) (Brugger 235). The vampire Lord Ruthven combines features of folkloric and romantic vampires, as well as new features and became a model for the following series of gentlemanly vampires, such as Dracula (Brown 105). By creating more civilized vampires than that of folklore the figure has become adapted to literature and to the new century. Such transformations went on to the present day and the vampire never lost its popularity. While in the 19th century the vampire “occupies a kind of mid-range between the beast and the hero”, over the course of time the figure started to develop up to a more sympathetic being and misunderstood outsider. The vampire “has evolved from a merely bestial creature in folklore to an appealing figure in twentieth-century popular culture” (Senf, The Vampire 142–45). And when we go on to watch the progress of the evolution of the vampire in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight-Series, we cannot fail to detect a development in the very same direction. The Twilight-vampires are perfectly humanized and differ completely from their predecessors.
But what are the reasons for these changes? Many literary researchers who dealt with vampire fiction see the reasons in the vampires’ metaphorical capacity and their responsiveness to the ages of their creation. Mary Hallab claims that almost all humans share the same needs, fears and hopes, fitting in their particular culture and age (9). All these people have a folklore which satisfies some of their needs, or answers some of their questions. This also applies to vampire folklore and its literary successors (Hallab 9–13). Calmet and Rosseau were the first to recognize that the appearance of such an entity as the vampire must have significant reasons. Calmet noticed that the vampire was a modern fancy, occurring in a specific setting, and believed it necessary to examine the phenomenon in its historical context (Butler 4). Rousseau had a similar way of looking at the matter. He concentrated on why the vampire had become such an important subject of popular belief. He stated that miracles, as that of the vampires, revealed much about the nature of authority in society, as well as fears and hopes of the people (Frayling 32–33). He saw the demons as an instrument of Christianity, as “manifestations of the sombre and nefarious tyranny of opinion exercised by priests over the minds of men […] which require [that] believers should submit to principles they cannot grasp by reason and sense” (Frayling 33). In addition to this, Rosseau saw vampires as metaphors for the master-slave dialectic. This topic was very important in an age, when the birth of property and the growth of agriculture had transformed people into masters and slaves, everyone longing for the goods of their neighbors (Frayling 34). Sara L. Robinson’s explanation of reasons for becoming a vampire in the 18th century, confirms the idea that vampirism was used as an instrument of authorities. Next to becoming a vampire by being bitten or killed by one, she names causes as being an illegitimate child of illegitimate parents; leading an immoral, promiscuous, and impious life; excommunication, anti-social behavior, and death causes such as murder and suicide. Methods for killing vampires, as staking, the vampires’ connection with the devil, and their status as Antichrists and being condemned to eternal damnation, underline the assumption that vampirism was used as an instrument of Christianity (Robinson 4-5, 7). In addition to this, Robinson examines that vampires often represented...
