Essay Plan 1500 words (small steps in one discussion): Introduction 150 words This assignment will analyse

yse critically the importance and popularity that shadows the mythological being of the vampire in that it is a cultural shape shifter from past to present. Bram Stokers Dracula (1897) will be treated as the basis of the vampire profile and used to help discuss the change of the vampire through history. Other key sources include Carol Margaret Davisons Bram Stokers Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897-1997 (1997) which will seek to aid the exploration of Dracula in relation to the culture it was written during, Michael Ferbers Romanticism: a very short introduction (2010) to define the art movement of Romanticism and Kathrin Fllers And Its All There- Intertextual Structures, Themes and Characters in Stephenie Meyers Twilight Series (2011) to examine how far the cultural change of society has impacted on the view of vampires. The assignment will begin by defining the point in history that vampire popularity kicked off, it will then go on to examine how vampirism came to be so popular in this time considering past cultural and art movements that may have impacted on this. A more contemporary change in vampire perception will then be regarded, finally leading on to how vampires have become to be postmodern in our culture. To conclude, the assignment will strive to show just how much impact society and culture has on the receiving of the vampire myth and as such why this has made them cultural shape shifters.

Main Body 1200 (approx 7 paragraphs) 1. Paragraph focus: Introduction to Dracula/archetypal vampire Dracula is a pure product of its time, a perfectly adapted series. The traits of its principal characters almost constitute a caricature of Victorian ideals In this respect, Dracula is a book which reinforces Victorian values. But values change while writings, once published, do not. All through the twentieth century, new interpretations of Dracula have appeared in literature and on screen. (Davison: 1997)

2. Paragraph focus: Romantism, Dracula and Victorian society (how the vampire ideal fits) Romanticism was a European cultural movementwhich found in a symbolic and internalized romance plot a vehicle for exploring ones self and its relationship to others and to nature detranscendentalized religion by taking God or the divine as inherent in nature or in soul and replaced theological doctrine with metaphor and feeling and which rebelled against the established canons of neoclassical aesthetics and against both aristocratic and bourgeois social and political norms in favor of values more individual, inward, and emotional. (Ferber:2010)

3. Paragraph focus: Classism, idea of vampire before Dracula, Cain & Abel (how it fit into society then) There is classicism when a society has taken on a relatively stable form and when it has been permeated with the myth of its perpetuity, that is, when it confounds the present with the eternal and historicity with traditionalism, when the hierarchy of classes is such that the virtual public never exceeds the real public when the power of the religious and political ideology is so strong and the prohibitions so rigorous that in no case is there any question of discovering new countries of the mind, but only of putting into shape the commonplaces adopted by the elite. (Sartre:1988) 4. Paragraph focus: Pain of vampires, Byronic hero-what vampires have become today. (relation to times) Angel has the Byronic look and demeanor par excellence He is beset by melancholy, guilt, and what the other characters tend to refer to as brooding. Angel has not only superhuman abilities to fight injustice but also the angst and long-suffering of Rices vampires Louis and Lestat, as well as Gaimans Dream. He also has the Byronic isolation of being an anomaly, a vampire with a soul, unable to fit into the human or vampire worlds. The restoration of his soul occurred as a result of a gypsy curse, which left him doomed to feel guilt and anguish and remorse over the crimes he committed as a vampire. He works towards his own redemption by fighting evil, but at the same time he has to combat his own dark side, which lies precariously close to the surface. (Stein:2009) 5. Paragraph focus: mixture of tradition and contemporary (bringing together societies-equality) alienation, immigration (feeds off cultural issues) As in other vampire fiction like Laurell K. Hamiltons Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series, vampires and other supernatural creatures coexist as part of human culture in Harriss novels. But in the Southern Vampire Mysteries, this is a new development. No longer lurking in the shadows, vampires in Harriss novels have come out of the coffin, have declared themselves in the world and have become a legally recognized minority. By understanding vampires in the way contemporary culture understands racial or physical different, Harris has reenvisioned the place and nature of vampires in her fictional world, placing them in social terms rather than in theological terms. (Clements: 2011) 6. Paragraph focus: Pain inside/person inside, teenage crisis, postmodernismvampire values but not recognised as vampire. Meyer positions her series in the tradition and progression of contemporary vampire fiction by adopting a perspective that does not regard the vampire as a mere outsider to what is familiar and known. She also aspires to modernize the concept of the other perspective by bestowing a voice to a human girl who feels not associated with other humans but would rather become a

vampire herself. With the help of Bella Swans narrative voice the world is still seen through human eyes but is close enough to the other to achieve a perspective that presents the unknown as uniquely sympathetic. (Fller:2011)

Conclusion -Vampire a metaphor for our society/cultural nature. -Time traveller/ being which can be related to no matter what time. -Undead/immortal being which has to adapt to new times because otherwise it will stand out which is exactly what we as humans do as well. We shift beliefs and ideals to fit in. -The vampire is viewed as more human than ever because they have become to adapt ideals of society that is at its strongest in humanity being. Illustration List Bibliography