A Bit Long in the Tooth

i loved "interview" and loved "twilight" .. In both movies the "vampires" are the most beautiful creatrues on earth thus the appeal,,, I mean as long as there arnt pepole out there trying to seriously bite other people for the purpose of drinking their blood (lol) ,, whats the harm in a little fantasy?? I sure dont mind it at all.. Well,, look at them,, who would?

To knitting needle....why did you even read the story to begin with? If you want to aONLY read about those "passions" as we all have them if we live on earth....then do it...but don't criticize someone for writing about something that is popular "right now"...

Check out William Schnoebelen's book. He was a former actual vampire.

o and btw edburns123 if the lord did infact end the world and all its immortality the vampires would live on!! hahaa

edburns123 u ought to put the bible down and read a Twilight book its far more interesting lol

edburns123 ur one sick twisted physco! i rlly ought to hit u with a bible lol

TWilIGHT IS AMAZING! go edward!

This otherwise excellent essay repeats a couple of common errors about the origins of vampire folklore. The true vampire "legend" is specific to Europe, particularly those parts of Europe dominated by the Orthodox Church. At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, folklorists George.R. Stetson, Dudley Wright and Montague Summers argued for a Universal Vampire Myth, claiming that "every culture in the world has a type of vampire." They were quite wrong. These writers fell into the same Eurocentric fallacy of many scholars of their era, such as Sir James Fraser. They added up superficial similarities and decided that any folk belief with any one of the characteristics of vampires as described in the Eastern European panics was "a type of vampire." If it drank blood, or returned from the grave, or was a supernatural creature that preyed on children and babies, or pestered people for sex, it was "a type of vampire." Everyone has seen the long (and growing) catalogs and encyclopedia of "vampires" from every known country and era.

But each of these creatures has its own cultural context and origin, and they're no more "types of vampires" than the native peoples encountered by Columbus were really misplaced Hindus just because they had dark skin and Columbus called them "Indians."

Belief in vampires had absolutely nothing to do with people misinterpreting the appearance of exhumed corpses. In fact, suspected vampires weren't exhumed at all until a "panic" and all its attending phenomena had been underway for weeks. Vampire beliefs had two main sources. The first source was a very strong religious and philosophical sense of how the universe should work, and the rules and laws everyone was supposed to follow to keep it that way. If this right order of things was violated, all kinds of unnatural events could result. The dead might leave their graves, souls couldn't progress to the afterworld, and catastrophes like famine, plague and war could follow. The second source of vampire beliefs was the actual occurrence of clusters of paranormal events, of a kind that have been reported throughout history and all over the world, and that continue to be reported regularly in modern times. The events happened first and the exhumations afterwards, a progression which is very clear in all the accounts of the "panics," including those that occurred in the United States.

The word "vampire" entered the English language in the 1600s and by 1740 it was already being used as a metaphor. Since then, it has been loaded with all kinds of social, artistic, psychological and political trappings. This rich overlay is what really makes the vampire such an enduring icon. Self-restrained "good guy" vampires have been fictional mainstays since at least the mid 70s, by the way. The television series Forever Knight and the novels of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and P.N. Elrod are j

The crux of the vampire story and the reason it got so much purchase in the Victorian era is and was that the vampire is the consummate outsider ,capable of doing what no decent Victorian man would, bringing a woman to orgasm and satisfying her sexually. There was a heavy price for that capacity, including getting no rest at night. Vampires had powers that nice Victorian men did not, including that undead potency in the bedroom.

Bram Stoker made Dracula seem loathesome to Joanathan Harker but hypnotically seductive to Lucy Westenra and Mina, Jonathan's wife. She had to choose between her role as a proper woman (she was also unusual in her gifts and power as a human being) and her attraction to her vampire lover. It took the efforts of Dr. Van Helsing and Jonathan to rein in her awakened libido.

The later vampire books have stressed the sexuality of vampires but the original Dracula is still the model.