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Encyclopedia entry: vampire

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The Oxford Companion to the Body
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vampire The predatory aristocrat whose blood-lust leads him to drain the blood of peasants, usually young women, is the stock figure of the vampire as represented by the cinematic Nosferatu, John Polidori's Lord Ruthven, and Bram Stoker's Count Dracula. For the ‘undead’, this exsanguination is a reproductive act, that conflates both food and sex. The most effective means of reproduction for the vampire, however, has been textual. Novels such as Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872), Stoker's Dracula (1897), and Prest's Varney the Vampire (1847) have perpetuated an image that continues to replicate itself throughout our culture rather like a virus. Vampirism is encoded ...

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