The Blood Delirium: 19th Century European Vampire Literature

by Black, Candice

• ISBN13: 9780983884286
• ISBN10: 0983884285
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-11-30
• Publisher: Scb Distributors

Summary

THE BLOOD DELIRIUM is a definitive collection of 19th century European literature in which the vampire, or vampirism - both embodied and atmospheric - is featured or evoked. Twentythree seminal works by classic European authors, covering the whole of that delirious period from Gothic and Romantic, through Symbolism and Decadence to protoSurrealism and beyond, in a single volume charged with sex, blood and horror.With a detailed introduction by editor Candice Black which not only examines these texts and their meaning, but also the literary and cultural climate in which the new cult of the vampire was allowed to flourish.BRAM STOKER, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, LAUTRÉAMONT, MAUPASSANT, COUNT STENBOCK, CYPRIEN BERARD, JEAN LORRAIN, THÉOPHILE GAUTIER, PAUL FÉVAL, CHARLES NODIER, JAN NERUDA, JOHN POLIDORI, IVAN TURGENEV, CHARLOTTE BRONTE, JK HUYSMANS, J.M. RYDER, LÉON BLOY, MAURICE ROLLINAT, AUGUSTUS HARE, J SHERIDAN LE FANU, OSCAR WILDESeveral texts are here translated into English for the very first time, including those by Cyprien Berard and Maurice Rollinat.The definitive collection for literate vampire-lovers.

Excerpts

OPENING THE BLOODGATESIt all began with Lord Byron, whose signature in April 1819 appeared beneath a story published in London, entitled The Vampyre, now generally accepted as the first prose incarnation of the "traditional” vampire in English. By July, a French translation by Charles Nodier had appeared in the influential Journal de Paris. The following year, an apparent sequel to The Vampyre appeared in Paris, titled Lord Ruthwen or The Vampires, and signed enigmatically (but transparently) by "the author of Jean Sbogar” (Nodier) and "C.B.” (Cyprien Bérard, director of the Théâtre de Vaudeville. Nodier is also believed partly responsible for The Vampire, a melodrama in three acts which opened in June 1820. This was soon followed by other stage productions, including The Three Vampires, by Brazier, Gabriel and Armand, and the parodic Cadet Bouteux or The Vampire. Also in 1820 came Nodier's weird novel Smarra, featuring a vampiric entity, followed by Being Lord Ruthven, an 1821 vaudeville play by Eugène Scribe; the bloodgates were well and truly open, and in 1825 Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon produced La Vampire, the first gothic novel of a female vampire. It was later revealed that the author of The Vampyre was not Byron, but his associate Dr. John Polidori - Byron had only plotted a fragmentary outline for a vampire story, and Polidori had taken it upon himself to actually deliver, using Byron as a rôle model - but this revelation did nothing to quell the tide of vampire literature that had now been unleashed.The most important and the most intriguing 19th century examples from this new literary genre of the vampire are now collected in this volume, The Blood Delirium. These diverse selected fictions of embodied and atmospheric vampirism are enlightening reflections on Victorian sexual ethics and attitudes. Convulsive repetitions of blood-suckings and energy appropriations are covered; the religious or moral fears and subversions are very evident, and highly seminal: "eaten alive by desire” or fending off the threat of being consumed by the immoral "chaos” of an aberrant sexuality, that has little interest in acceptable procreative nuptials. The anthology, arranged chronologically, commences with Polidori's The Vampyre and concludes with extracts from Stoker's Dracula, the first book to fully evoke the sexually diabolic or fatal concept of castration and subversion born of repression. .........