The Vampire In Slavic Cultures

This book brings together a wide variety of historical, critical, and literary texts that reveal and discover the origins, growth, and development of the vampire myth from its beginnings to the 21st century.

Eight hundred years before Bram Stoker gave us the West's most memorable literary vampire in Dracula and long before the historical exploits of Vlad Tepes "The Impaler" horrified Europe, the Russian Primary Chronicles wrote of a Novgorodian priest as upyr' likhij, or "wicked vampire." The Slavic and Balkan worlds abound in histories, legends, myths, and literary portraits of the so-called undead, creatures which draw life out of the living in order to sustain themselves. These stories of the vampire simultaneously fascinate and horrify, as they draw the reader closer to an understanding of death and the undead. Slavic Blood: The Vampire in Russian and East European Cultures is a unique volume that brings together a wide variety of historical, critical, and literary texts that reveal and explore the origins, growth, and development of the vampire myth from its beginnings to the 21st century. It examines the vampire myth within the region of its origin in Western cultures - the lands of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Russia - and reviews the earliest recorded tales, as well as recent portrayals of Russian vampires on film, to give the reader a dynamic perspective on one the world's most enduring cultural phenomena. This edition features additional fiction and nonfiction material on sociopolitical interpretations of the vampire, as well as new song lyrics on vampire and werewolf themes. Slavic Blood is ideal for courses ranging from folklore to gothic studies, and Slavic to religious studies. Thomas J. Garza, Ed.D., is Regents and University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas. He teaches courses on the Russian language and literature, foreign language pedagogy, and contemporary Russian culture. His popular course, "The Vampire in Slavic Cultures," has been taught since 1997, and he has published several articles on the contemporary image of the vampire in Russian popular culture in both United States and Russian academic journals. A native Texan, Dr. Garza received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1987. During his tenure at the University of Texas, he has received numerous awards for undergraduate teaching. His current research is on filmic and cultural portraits of machismo in contemporary Russian and Latino cultures during the '90s and 2000s.

Eight hundred years before Bram Stoker gave us the West's most memorable vampire in Dracula (1897) and long before the exploits of Vlad "the Impaler" Tepes horrified Europe (1431-46), the Russian Primary Chronicles write of a Novgorodian priest as Upyr' Likhij, or Wicked Vampire (1047). The Slavic and Balkan worlds abound in histories, legends, myths and literary portraits of the so-called undead, creatures which draw life out of the living in order to sustain their own. These stories of the vampire simultaneously fascinate and horrify, as they draw the reader closer to an understanding of death and the undead. This unique volume brings together a wide variety of historical, critical, and literary texts that reveal and explore the origins, growth, and development of the vampire myth from its beginnings to the 21st century. These texts explore the vampire within the region of its origin in Western cultures: the lands of the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Russia. From the earliest recorded tales to the recent offerings of Russian vampires on film, this volume gives the reader a dynamic perspective on one the world's most enduring cultural phenomena, the vampire. Thomas Garza, Ed.D., is University Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses on Russian language and literature, foreign language pedagogy, and contemporary Russian culture. His popular course, The Vampire in Slavic Cultures, has been taught since 1997. He has been traveling to and researching in Russia since 1979 and has lived in Moscow for over six years. A native Texan, Dr. Garza received his doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1987. During his eighteen-year tenure at the University, he has received several prizes for undergraduate teaching, including the Texas Excellence Award, the President's Associates Award, the Harry Ransom Award, and in 2003 was inducted into the university-wide Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His current research projects examine the attitudes of Russian youth toward the Chechen war and conscription, and notions of masculinity and machismo in Mexican and Russian film of the late 90s and 2000s.

Analyzes how the rhetoric of Yugoslav intellectuals and politicians and the U.S.-led Western media and political leadership framed the serbs as metaphorical vampires in the last decades of the twentieth century.

It's the cultural information that never seems to make it into history books: strange stories, mystic rites, angry gods, vision quests, magic symbols. This series captures, culture by culture, the intersection of imagination, history, wisdom, dream, and reality.

Even before Bram Stoker immortalized Transylvania as the homeland of his fictional Count Dracula, the figure of the vampire was inextricably tied to Eastern Europe in the popular imagination. Drawing on a wealth of heretofore neglected sources, this book offers a fascinating account of how vampires—whose various incarnations originally emerged from the folk traditions of societies throughout the world—became identified with such a specific region. It demonstrates that the modern conception of the vampire was born in the crucible of the Enlightenment, embodying a mysterious, Eastern “otherness” that stood opposed to Western rationality.

The first book to explore the origins of the vampire slayer “A fascinating comparison of the original vampire myths to their later literary transformations.” —Adam Morton, author of On Evil “From the Balkan Mountains to Beverly Hills, Bruce has mapped the vampire’s migration. There’s no better guide for the trek.” —Jan L. Perkowski, Professor, Slavic Department, University of Virginia, and author of Vampires of the Slavs and The Darkling: A Treatise on Slavic Vampirism “The vampire slayer is our protector, our hero, our Buffy. But how much do we really know about him—or her? Very little, it turns out, and Bruce McClelland shows us why: because the vampire slayer is an unsettling figure, almost as disturbing as the evil she is set to destroy. Prepare to be frightened . . . and enlightened.” —Corey Robin, author of Fear: The History of a Political Idea “What is unique about this book is that it is the first of its kind to focus on the vampire hunter, rather than the vampire. As such, it makes a significant contribution to the field. This book will appeal to scholars and researchers of folklore, as well as anyone interested in the literature and popular culture of the vampire.” —Elizabeth Miller, author of Dracula and A Dracula Handbook “Shades of Van Helsing! Vampirologist extraordinaire Bruce McClelland has managed that rarest of feats: developing a radically new and thoroughly enlightening perspective on a topic of eternal fascination. Ranging from the icons of popular culture to previously overlooked details of Balkan and Slavic history and folk practice, he has rethought the borders of life and death, good and evil, saint and sinner, vampires and their slayers. Excellent scholarship, and a story that never flags.” —Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago, and author of Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship,Authority: Construction and Corrosion, and Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice

Examines the enormous popular appeal of vampires from early Greek and Slavic folklore to present-day popular culture.

Since the publication of John Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early nineteenth century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? In this collection of sixteen original essays, the contributors shed light on this question. One essay traces the origins of the legend to the early medieval Norse draugr, an "undead" creature who reflects the underpinnings of Dracula, the latter first appearing as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula. In addition to these investigations of the Western mythic, literary and historic traditions, other essays in this volume move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual, as well as the existence of similar vampiric traditions in Japanese, Russian and Latin American art, theatre, literature, film, and other cultural productions. The female vampire looms large, beginning with the Sumerian goddess Lilith, including the nineteenth-century Carmilla, and moving to vampiresses in twentieth-century film, literature, and television series. Scientific explanations for vampires and werewolves constitute another section of the book, including eighteenth-century accounts of unearthing, decapitation and cremation of suspected vampires in Eastern Europe. The vampire's beauty, attainment of immortality and eternal youth are all suggested as reasons for its continued success in contemporary popular culture.