The Vampire: A Casebook - Softcover

Dundes, Alan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299159248 ISBN 13: 9780299159245

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

Synopsis

Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Eleven leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood.

The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word “vampire;” Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire has been and continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it—in reality or in fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Dundes (1934–2005) was professor of anthropology and folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, and published ten books with the University of Wisconsin Press, including Parsing Through Customs: Essays by a Freudian Folklorist; The Vampire: A Casebook; The Blood Libel Legend; and The Cockfight.: A Casebook. He was also the editor of Recollecting Freud by Isidor Sadger.

From the Back Cover

INALLY, THE TRUTH ABOUT VAMPIRES

Vampires are the most fearsome and fascinating of all creatures of folklore. For the first time, detailed accounts of the vampire and how its tradition developed in different cultures are gathered in one volume by eminent folklorist Alan Dundes. Eleven leading scholars from the fields of Slavic studies, history, anthropology, and psychiatry unearth the true nature of the vampire from its birth in graveyard lore to the modern-day psychiatric patient with a penchant for drinking blood.

The Vampire: A Casebook takes this legend out of the realm of literature and film and back to its dark beginnings in folk traditions. The essays examine the history of the word "vampire"; Romanian vampires; Greek vampires; Serbian vampires; the physical attributes of vampires; the killing of vampires; and the possible psychoanalytic underpinnings of vampires. Much more than simply a scary creature of the human imagination, the vampire continues to haunt the lives of all those who encounter it -- in reality or in fiction.

Reviews

Dundes (The Walled-Up Wife, Univ. of Wisconsin, 1996) presents a collection of essays by renowned folklorists (Friedrich Krauss, Juliette du Boulay, Paul Barber, and others) in an attempt to explain and define the tradition of the vampire outside the context of literature and legend. He begins with essays discussing the etymology of the term vampire and its history and ethnography. More in-depth essays follow, with analyses of Romanian and other Slavic vampire folklore. One work treating forensic pathology attempts to explain how "folk" might easily see the natural process of bodily decomposition as vampirism. Another discusses the psychology of clinical vampirism, and a final essay by the editor, with an admitted Freudian bias, tries to weave together the strands of legend and reality. Recommended for academic and public libraries with strong folklore collections but also valuable as a literary companion.?Katherine K. Koenig, Ellis Sch., Pittsburgh
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"In the late-seventeenth century, such an epidemic of vampirism occurred in Poland and Russia, and the French Mercure galant carried the following account of it:

"They appear from midday to midnight and come to suck the blood of living people and animals in such great abundance that sometimes it comes out of their mouths, their noses, and especially, their ears, and that sometimes the body swims in its blood which has spilled out into its coffin. They say the vampire has a kind of hunger that causes him to eat the cloth he finds around him. This revenant or vampire, or a demon in his form, comes out of his tomb and goes about at night violently embracing and seizing his friends and relatives and sucking their blood until they are weakened and exhausted, and finally causes their death."-Paul Barber, Forensic Pathology and the European Vampire

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299159248
• ISBN 13: 9780299159245
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192