Sign-In
Cart
Shadows of the Undead: The Evolution of Vampire Lore
Paperback
Religion General General World History
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Independently Published
Pages: 280
Weight: 1.44
Height: 0.59 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
Why does the vampire thrive while other monsters crumble to dust? This undying figure has transformed from peasant terror to pop culture icon, adapting with preternatural skill to each new era.
This groundbreaking cultural history dissects the vampire's metamorphosis from Eastern European revenant to global phenomenon, revealing how it embodies humanity's most persistent fears and forbidden desires. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources and cross-cultural analysis, Shadows of the Undead illuminates how this blood-drinking entity serves as a mirror reflecting society's changing anxieties about contagion, colonialism, sexuality, and economic exploitation.
The study traces pivotal transformations-from Polidori's aristocratic predator feeding on Romantic anxieties about class, to Stoker's Count Dracula embodying Victorian fears of foreign contamination, to Rice's introspective immortals grappling with modern existential crises, to Meyer's restrained Edward Cullen navigating post-millennial concerns about desire and restraint. Each incarnation reveals something essential about its cultural moment.
The research extends beyond Western traditions, examining how the Chinese jiangshi, Filipino manananggal, and Caribbean soucouyant evolved within their specific cultural contexts while sharing surprising symbolic functions. These global perspectives challenge Eurocentric assumptions about vampire mythology and reveal universal concerns about predation and immortality.
Bridging scholarly rigor with compelling accessibility, Shadows of the Undead offers fresh insights into how the vampire helps us process our deepest anxieties about boundaries-between life and death, self and other, consumption and sustainability. For cultural historians, media scholars, and thoughtful enthusiasts, it provides a definitive analysis of why we remain perpetually under the vampire's thrall.
In an age of disposable icons, the vampire endures. This book explains why-and what that reveals about ourselves.
Also from
Hunter, E. L.
Seven Stars in the North: Seers, Sovereignty and the Celestial Bear in Indo-European Myth
Hunter, E. L.
Paperback
Early Medieval Wales: From Roman Collapse to English Conquest (410 - 1282 CE)
Hunter, E. L.
Paperback
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Braunschweiger, Art
Hall, Steve
Beveridge, Bruce
Hardcover
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Hardcover
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Burke, Daniel
Detrow, Scott
Hardcover
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Venditozzi, Zoe
Mitchell, Claire
Paperback
Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History
Cohen, Adam
Hardcover
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City
Brown, Kate
Hardcover
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Clavin, Tom
Drury, Bob
Hardcover
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Paperback
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool
Dugard, Martin
Hardcover
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation
Anderson, Scott
Hardcover
How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession
Blackwell Baines, Caitlin
Hardcover
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
The Women's History of the Modern World: How Radicals, Rebels, and Everywomen Revolutionized the Last 200 Years
Miles, Rosalind
Paperback
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
McGilchrist, Iain
Paperback