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Vampire in folklore vs literature
The speech of The history of vampires in literature
Discuss and analyze the vampire
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The problem or question of what it means to be damned is difficult to understand at the best of times, it is however all the more difficult when the subject in question is a vampire. How does a vampire that has developed God-like powers and whose only way to survive is to take human life, redeem themselves in the eyes of God? This is not really an issue for Lestat; as for the majority of the Vampire Chronicles he believes himself to be a form of God. With every life that Lestat takes he is committing a mortal sin, the gravest form of sin and he does so with full knowledge and consent. With reference to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and both Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned motion pictures, Lestat's journey from mortal to perhaps damned immortal will be cross examined with Christian thought on what it is to be damned an how Lestat has transcended the state of sinner to supernatural supreme entity.
Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles cover great lengths of time from pre-revolutionary France to late twentieth century New York and New Orleans. Within this time Rice shows us the transformation of a literary icon, we see him move from the wolf-killing shabby aristocrat to being offered the position of the Devils lieutenant. It becomes clear that religion has been very important to Rice throughout her life; within the Vampire Chronicles there are many references to religious beliefs and Christian relics. It will be examined how a creature such as Lestat can be included in the Christian faith and what affect it may have upon him.
What is Mortal Sin and how is it relevant to Lestat?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church a mortal sin is considered to be a grave matter, which is committed with the full kno...
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...l commentary and philosophy', The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, eds, N. Kretzmann and E. Stump, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Suchocki, M. H. (1995) The Fall to Violence: Original sin in relational theory, New York, Continuum Publishing Co
Toufic, J. (1993) Vampires - An uneasy essay on the undead in film, New York, Station Hill
Turner, A. K. (1995) The History of Hell, London, Robert Hale
The Holy Bible, (1995) London, Hodder & Stoughton
Worley, L (Ph.D.) (1997) Anne Rice's Protestant Vampires, http://members.tripod.com/~Baron91/WorleyProtVamp.html
What is Mortal Sin? http://www.saintaquinas.com/mortal_sin.html
The Structure of Dante's Inferno, www.atsweb.neu.edu/uc/s.cassavant/DanteOut.html
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A belief against religion was evil; therefore one who was not devout would be deemed bad or wicked. Dracula, was as evil as a creature gets and a nightmare for the pious; he was a symbol of an Anti-Christ and could even be called Satan. “I drew away, and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe it was ever there.” (Stoker 24-25).
... A. Karen Russell's 'Vampires' Deserve The Raves. " NPR.com - "The New York Times" NPR, n.d. - The New York Times, n.d. Web. The Web. The Web.
In a world with ghosts, monsters, demons, and ghouls, there is one being that resonates in everyone’s mind. The idea of these creatures can be found in almost every culture on the planet in one form or another. They prey on the weak and they feast on the blood of their victims. They are compared to a fox for being quick and cunning, but also rather seductive in their nature. With their unholy existence one can only describe them as almost demonic. So what is this horrid creature? Well it is none other than the vampire, a creature as old as time itself. Throughout history there have been many different variations of the vampire, each with their own unique abilities. But one cannot help but mention
Carmilla is an example of a woman who loves her food far too much. Carmilla is consumed entirely by her food, even sleeping in a coffin of blood: “The limbs were perfectly flexible, the flesh elastic; and the leaden coffin floated with blood, in which to a depth of seven inches, the body lay immersed” (Le Fanu 102). There exists a unique relationship between the vampire and their victims. Food becomes defined in terms of victimhood, distinctly separated from humanity’s general consumption of meat. The need for human victims makes hunting synonymous with courtship, as intense emotional connections are established between the vampiress and her food. As seen in the intense relationship developed between Laura and Carmilla, the vampire is “prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons” (105). For Carmilla, cruelty and love are inseparable (33). The taking of the victims’ blood for sustenance is a highly sexualized exchange of fluids from one body to another. The act of consumption is transformed into an illicit carnal exchange between the hunter and the hunted.
Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror: The Sexuality of Dracula. 2nd ed. Vol. 103. N.p.: Modern Language Association, 1988. JSTOR. Web. 6 Jan. 2014. .
While Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been described as the “quintessence of evil creatures we meet in our everyday lives” and “the Darkness” in the hearts of men (Herbert, 2004, pp. 62), Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight
After analyzing The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is the ideal vampiric figure, supporting Thomas Foster’s perspective about vampirism from his book, How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In fact, Roger Chillingworth, presents many instances of how vampires might act and appear in literature. Even though he is not a literal vampire, it does not
While studying the diabolical figures in the devil, the idea of presenting Dracula came to mind. Dracula represents the devil in many similar ways. Dracula remains as a character in many diabolical movies and films. For instance, Van Helsing provides a good interpret of how Dracula remains noticed in the past and in present day. Although Dracula’s character obtains different views in every movie and film, he plays an important role in Stephen Sommers Van Helsing movie. In the movie, he acts as many different things. Demonstrating both the kind and evil inside, Dracula portrays his character as a mystery. Different views of Dracula throughout the movie include harsh, strong, powerful, evil, the devil, and unstoppable. The studies of Dracula
Orlomoski, Caitlyn. "From Monsters to Victims: Vampires and Their Cultural Evolution from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century." N.p., 7 May 2011. Web. 13 Apr. 2014. .
Unlike other latter-day adaptations of the vampire legend -- such as films like The Hunger and Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire novels -- which actively shatter accepted tenets of vampirism, such as the danger of sunlight or crosses to vampires, "Buffy" relies heavily on the guidelines for vampirism established by Stoker in his novel. In "Buffy," as in Dracula, vampires can be killed by direct sunlight and harmed by holy water and crucifixes (Golden 125). When, for instance, Buffy's crucifix necklace touches her vampire boyfriend Angel's chest, it leaves a burn-mark similar to that left on vampire-defiled Mina Harker's forehead by application of a Holy Wafer in Dracula ("Angel;" Stoker 302). And unlike the sympathetic portrayals of vampires advanced in Rice's novels and in the 1960s soap opera "Dark Shadows," the vampires shown are not good or even human. They are, in the words of Buffy's Watcher Giles "demon at the c...
Evil and the God of Love, Revised Edition by John Hick, Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1978 p. 275.
it horrifies us and reinforces our sense of boundaries and normalcy” (Halberstam 13). Assuming that Bram Stoker’s Dracula sets the archetype of the vampire, it is clear that modern vampires have demonstrated a decrease in the Gothic horror despite similarities in the Gothic imagery and themes, and such a shift is attributed to a changing value of the limit within society and postmodernism. The Count is the benchmark of the vampire archetype as the monstrous Other that “announces itself as the place of corruption” (Anolik and Howard 1). Dracula is associated with disruption and transgression of accepted limits—a monstrosity of great evil that serves to guarantee the existence of good (Punter and Byron 231).
Humanity has always been fascinated with the allure of immortality and although in the beginning vampires were not a symbol of this, as time passed and society changed so did the ideas and perceptions surrounding them. The most important thing to ask yourself at this point is 'What is immortality?' Unfortunately this isn't as easily answered as asked. The Merriam Webster Dictionary says immortality is 'the quality or state of being immortal; esp : unending existence' while The World Book Encyclopedia states it as 'the continued and eternal life of a human being after the death of the body.' A more humorous definition can be found in The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:
Holte, James Craig. Dracula in the Dark: The Dracula Film Adaptations. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...