Metamorphoses of Vampires in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”

• Main Authors: I-ting Tsai, 蔡怡婷
• Other Authors: Shu-fen Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83616186668591728592

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國文學所 === 94 === This thesis will be focus on the male and female vampires in both Dracula and “Carmilla” in order to explore their different faces and metamorphoses. After that, I hope to infer the reason why vampire stories always attract people. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter deals with Tzvetan Todorov’s theory on the fantastic. And as Todorov says, the fantastic gives us a chance to read something which is forbidden to talk about, such as incest and homosexuality. Readers can enjoy the delights of aberration when reading the fantastic without really breaking the moral standards and the rules. In the fantastic stories, vampires appear as the incarnations of different taboos. Since there are many different taboos in the society, vampires metamorphose into different forms. In this chapter, folkloric vampires are also mentioned. From the folkloric vampires, we know that vampires’ images and traits differ from countries to countries and cultures to cultures. Chapter Two deals with all the male and female vampires in Dracula and “Carmilla”. In this chapter, male and female vampires will be explored using Carol A. Senf’s idea of the three characteristics associated with vampires. From this chapter we know further that vampires change their images according to people’s and society’s needs. In Chapter Three, the focus is on the two protagonists, Dracula and Carmilla, in the two vampire fictions. There will be three main points in this part. The first one is about the historic Dracula and Carmilla. In the second point, heterosexuality and homosexuality will be discussed. At last, another vampire fiction, Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape, will be used to discuss vampire’s voice. From this novel, we know that vampires in the twentieth century are very different from those in the previous centuries. They speak for themselves. They transform from terrible monsters to attractive characters. From these three chapters, we know that the reason why vampires always can attract people is because of their fluid nature. They don’t have a stable image. They metamorphose into different images according to different culture, society, and epoch in order to answer to people’s and society’s fears or needs.