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Our Vampires, Ourselves
Nina Auerbach shows how every age embraces the vampire it needs, and gets the vampire it deserves. Working with a wide range of texts, as well as movies and television, Auerbach locates vampires at the heart of our national experience and uses them as a lens for viewing the last two hundred years of Anglo-American cultural history.
"[Auerbach] has seen more Hammer movies than I (or the monsters) have had steaming hot diners, encountered more bloodsuckers than you could shake a stick at, even a pair of crossed sticks, such as might deter a very sophisticated ogre, a hick from the Moldavian boonies....Auerbach has dissected and deconstructed them with the tender ruthlessness of a hungry chef, with cogency and wit."—Eric Korn, Times Literary Supplement
"This seductive work offers profound insights into many of the urgent concerns of our time and forces us to confront the serious meanings that we invest, and seek, in even the shadiest manifestations of the eroticism of death."—Wendy Doniger, The Nation
"A vigorous, witty look at the undead as cultural icons."— Kirkus Review
"In case anyone should think this book is merely a boring lit-crit exposition...Auerbach sets matters straight in her very first paragraph. 'What vampires are in any given generation,' she writes, 'is a part of what I am and what my times have become. This book is a history of Anglo-American culture through its mutating vampires.'...Her book really takes off."—Maureen Duffy, New York Times Book Review
"[Auerbach] has seen more Hammer movies than I (or the monsters) have had steaming hot diners, encountered more bloodsuckers than you could shake a stick at, even a pair of crossed sticks, such as might deter a very sophisticated ogre, a hick from the Moldavian boonies....Auerbach has dissected and deconstructed them with the tender ruthlessness of a hungry chef, with cogency and wit."—Eric Korn, Times Literary Supplement
"This seductive work offers profound insights into many of the urgent concerns of our time and forces us to confront the serious meanings that we invest, and seek, in even the shadiest manifestations of the eroticism of death."—Wendy Doniger, The Nation
"A vigorous, witty look at the undead as cultural icons."— Kirkus Review
"In case anyone should think this book is merely a boring lit-crit exposition...Auerbach sets matters straight in her very first paragraph. 'What vampires are in any given generation,' she writes, 'is a part of what I am and what my times have become. This book is a history of Anglo-American culture through its mutating vampires.'...Her book really takes off."—Maureen Duffy, New York Times Book Review
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
August 20, 2009
This is nonfiction at its best; thoughtful, well-supported, well-organized, and written in a personal and entertaining way that does not condescend to the reader. Auerbach gives a thorough survey of literary vampires, touching on their folklore origins, but really focusing on popular literary and cinematic vampires from the Romantics through Reaganites and posits via psychoanalytic, feminist, social, and queer theory how vampires reflect the eras that produce them.
This is a must-read for fans of vampire fiction or simply for those who are simply interested in the history of the literary vampire. As the book ends, Auerbach suggests that the rather anemic vampires of the 80s will be reborn in a new way in coming decades, words that seem enormously prescient, given that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" debuted a mere two years after the book was published in 1995 and the enormous popularity of the "Twilight" books and the television series "True Blood." And even if you don't care for these contemporary vampire incarnation, never fear. If nothing else, this book is solid proof that the popular vampire is a persistently mutable creature and will be something entirely new in the not-too distant future.
This is a must-read for fans of vampire fiction or simply for those who are simply interested in the history of the literary vampire. As the book ends, Auerbach suggests that the rather anemic vampires of the 80s will be reborn in a new way in coming decades, words that seem enormously prescient, given that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" debuted a mere two years after the book was published in 1995 and the enormous popularity of the "Twilight" books and the television series "True Blood." And even if you don't care for these contemporary vampire incarnation, never fear. If nothing else, this book is solid proof that the popular vampire is a persistently mutable creature and will be something entirely new in the not-too distant future.
May 9, 2020
THREE STARS: the rating that means, "I might read it again, I might not."
I loved the opening chapters and the exploration of pre-Dracula literary vampires: the contexts into which they were born, the interpretations of them on stage and in film. Then we hit Dracula and wow, we do not seem to stop for a long, long time. Dracula's origins, Stoker's possibly commentary on Wilde were again, interesting -- but much of those chapters is seemingly endless, endless details about different takes on the same damn book with only a sprinkling of commentary on why those details were important. If you're a Dracula nerd, sure, this will be catnip. If not? It's a bit of a slog.
And then it got a little bit worse. The final third(ish) of the book is divided between two decades: the '70s, which Auerbach loves and loves everything resulting from; and the '80s, which Auerbach saw as the death of everything good, and thinks everything resulting from is tainted by association. The woman does not hold back, is what I'm saying. And it's daunting, because look, I adore the '70s vampires films -- but I still can't deny that at this point, Auerbach's logic treads perilously close to confusing "this thing is important because I, personally, like it" and "I, personally, like this thing because it is important."
In fact whatever facade of academic objectivity Auerbach tried to maintain falls away completely in this section. She leaves oddly snarky or defensive footnotes about her students' reactions or her colleagues' presentations. She makes her seething hatred of the 1992 Dracula abundantly clear, even though she never dissects it as part of a decade trend. She also has an oddly un-feminist scorn of female characters; she drags the protagonist of The Gilda Stories over the coals for the same "de-fanged" approach to vampirism that Lestat suffers, but whenever praising that character and his books Auerbach never details his similar sins. She also reduces the Vampire Chronicles to stories about "beautiful boys," only speaking of the two female vampires she believes are victims or villains of the patriarchy and ignoring the rest, as well as any implications of their portrayals. (In fact, she has a habit of fudging such details about the texts discussed to make her arguments. It's the kind of thing that makes me glad the book stops before the vampire boom of the late '90s and 2000s, where I might be even less willing to entertain Auerbach's fudging with properties I know inside and out.)
Is it internalized misogyny? Is it disliking Rice's retcons and machinations after Interview With the Vampire and relegating them, like all else, as sins of the '80s? Who knows, but Auerbach has a weird, out-of-place tangent about plastic surgery and breast fetishism, and also describes Hammer heroines as "swollen" so repetitively I wondered where her editor had gone. Then she lauds Mae from Near Dark (whose image graces the cover) as "boyish," "tomboy," etc, in a feverishly admiring tone. I'm saying there's a real whiff of second wave, "not like other girls"-type feminism in this book.
Auerbach's sniffing at the contributions of Queer Theory don't help -- she acknowledges homosexual subtext and potential in the most obvious texts (Carmilla, The Vampyre, Interview -- although Auerbach's certainty about that last text is pretty funny in the face of Rice's "no homo" protestations) but she draws the line at any kind of gender negotiation or ambiguity, outright mocks it in fact. A text is only radical when it confronts oppressive systems directly, Auerbach maintains, and so The Gilda Stories is dismissed as too huggy-wuggy touchy-feely, while she ignores the impact of envisioning a separatist utopia led by a black lesbian. Also, The Hunger isn't gay enough for Auerbach, somehow, and also too consumerist to be respected. But the pre-war opulence and soft touch of the 1979 Dracula with Frank Langella gets many adoring paragraphs because of "feminist revisionism" to the familiar story.
My point is that intersectionality is not Auerbach's forte, and neither is her ability to analyze a text without her personal feelings as context -- which is where her pettier footnotes about pushback from her students come into play. Even for the early '90s, Auerbach comes across as a bit of a White Feminist fossil, speaking with a collective "we" whenever recounting the impact of superior (so she maintains) texts from the '60s and '70s on women of her age in that era, and how no artistic or political ideology has been as satisfying in the years since. (Don't expect her to make a single mention of the seminal Blacula (1972), though. She at least acknowledges lesbian exploitation vampire films, but seems to regard them as out of her area of expertise.) And yes, the way she describes certain Queer Theory colleagues and their work is decidedly TERF-y. Auerbach maintains she's using the pronouns those individuals claim, and in 1995 it was a much vague-er and undefined era of identity, but... just a heads up.
Still, I give it props for arguing convincingly that "low culture" properties like Hammer films and made-for-TV movies can contain just as much social commentary and subversion as classic texts of the Western canon. When Our Vampires, Ourselves does what it says on the tin -- looks at how vampires can be reflections of the people who created them, the times they were created in -- and gets out of its own way, it's an interesting read.
I loved the opening chapters and the exploration of pre-Dracula literary vampires: the contexts into which they were born, the interpretations of them on stage and in film. Then we hit Dracula and wow, we do not seem to stop for a long, long time. Dracula's origins, Stoker's possibly commentary on Wilde were again, interesting -- but much of those chapters is seemingly endless, endless details about different takes on the same damn book with only a sprinkling of commentary on why those details were important. If you're a Dracula nerd, sure, this will be catnip. If not? It's a bit of a slog.
And then it got a little bit worse. The final third(ish) of the book is divided between two decades: the '70s, which Auerbach loves and loves everything resulting from; and the '80s, which Auerbach saw as the death of everything good, and thinks everything resulting from is tainted by association. The woman does not hold back, is what I'm saying. And it's daunting, because look, I adore the '70s vampires films -- but I still can't deny that at this point, Auerbach's logic treads perilously close to confusing "this thing is important because I, personally, like it" and "I, personally, like this thing because it is important."
In fact whatever facade of academic objectivity Auerbach tried to maintain falls away completely in this section. She leaves oddly snarky or defensive footnotes about her students' reactions or her colleagues' presentations. She makes her seething hatred of the 1992 Dracula abundantly clear, even though she never dissects it as part of a decade trend. She also has an oddly un-feminist scorn of female characters; she drags the protagonist of The Gilda Stories over the coals for the same "de-fanged" approach to vampirism that Lestat suffers, but whenever praising that character and his books Auerbach never details his similar sins. She also reduces the Vampire Chronicles to stories about "beautiful boys," only speaking of the two female vampires she believes are victims or villains of the patriarchy and ignoring the rest, as well as any implications of their portrayals. (In fact, she has a habit of fudging such details about the texts discussed to make her arguments. It's the kind of thing that makes me glad the book stops before the vampire boom of the late '90s and 2000s, where I might be even less willing to entertain Auerbach's fudging with properties I know inside and out.)
Is it internalized misogyny? Is it disliking Rice's retcons and machinations after Interview With the Vampire and relegating them, like all else, as sins of the '80s? Who knows, but Auerbach has a weird, out-of-place tangent about plastic surgery and breast fetishism, and also describes Hammer heroines as "swollen" so repetitively I wondered where her editor had gone. Then she lauds Mae from Near Dark (whose image graces the cover) as "boyish," "tomboy," etc, in a feverishly admiring tone. I'm saying there's a real whiff of second wave, "not like other girls"-type feminism in this book.
Auerbach's sniffing at the contributions of Queer Theory don't help -- she acknowledges homosexual subtext and potential in the most obvious texts (Carmilla, The Vampyre, Interview -- although Auerbach's certainty about that last text is pretty funny in the face of Rice's "no homo" protestations) but she draws the line at any kind of gender negotiation or ambiguity, outright mocks it in fact. A text is only radical when it confronts oppressive systems directly, Auerbach maintains, and so The Gilda Stories is dismissed as too huggy-wuggy touchy-feely, while she ignores the impact of envisioning a separatist utopia led by a black lesbian. Also, The Hunger isn't gay enough for Auerbach, somehow, and also too consumerist to be respected. But the pre-war opulence and soft touch of the 1979 Dracula with Frank Langella gets many adoring paragraphs because of "feminist revisionism" to the familiar story.
My point is that intersectionality is not Auerbach's forte, and neither is her ability to analyze a text without her personal feelings as context -- which is where her pettier footnotes about pushback from her students come into play. Even for the early '90s, Auerbach comes across as a bit of a White Feminist fossil, speaking with a collective "we" whenever recounting the impact of superior (so she maintains) texts from the '60s and '70s on women of her age in that era, and how no artistic or political ideology has been as satisfying in the years since. (Don't expect her to make a single mention of the seminal Blacula (1972), though. She at least acknowledges lesbian exploitation vampire films, but seems to regard them as out of her area of expertise.) And yes, the way she describes certain Queer Theory colleagues and their work is decidedly TERF-y. Auerbach maintains she's using the pronouns those individuals claim, and in 1995 it was a much vague-er and undefined era of identity, but... just a heads up.
Still, I give it props for arguing convincingly that "low culture" properties like Hammer films and made-for-TV movies can contain just as much social commentary and subversion as classic texts of the Western canon. When Our Vampires, Ourselves does what it says on the tin -- looks at how vampires can be reflections of the people who created them, the times they were created in -- and gets out of its own way, it's an interesting read.
February 23, 2016
ніна ауербах любить вампірів, багато про них знає і вміє пов'язувати розвиток вампірських образів зі станом культури й соціуму. тобто ми й так розуміємо, що кожна епоха вигадує лякалки, які їй найкраще відповідають, але "наші вампіри, ми самі" розкручує сюжет про упирів дуже ретельно, придивляючись до найтонших його деталей і підкреслюючи зміни, пройти повз які запросто можуть навіть шанувальники жанру. в аналіз реакцій літературних вампірів на довколишній позалітературний світ поступово вплітаються роздуми про те, що ж можуть наші вампіри розповісти про ситуацію, в якій ми живемо (тут проглядає природна туга, і стає неймовірно цікаво, що сказала б ніна ауербах про найсвіжіші варіації образу).
November 18, 2020
This was super interesting and I enjoyed it a lot. It's basically literary/media history with a focus on vampires and the politics that influenced their stories. It's a bit academic in style, and literally half the book is just notes and an index, but as I'm reading this for my BA thesis, that didn't bother me. Not sure how a more casual reader might feel about it, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the media history vampires, especially since it comes at it from a gender studies perspective.
May 27, 2009
Helpful synopsis of vampire literature and film, from the early 19th century to 1995. One of the first scholars to take the vampire seriously.
The first part of the book, focusing on the 19th century, was the most interesting to me, being the most unfamiliar; Auerbach's contention that pre-Dracula vampires were typically in homoerotic plots is intriguing. The scope of the book narrowed considerably toward the end, with a whole chapter devoted to post-Reagan vampire lit/film; this narrowing gave the book an unbalanced feel.
Her book's central claim -- the construction of the vampire changes in reaction to the social and political milieu of the times -- is convincingly argued.
The first part of the book, focusing on the 19th century, was the most interesting to me, being the most unfamiliar; Auerbach's contention that pre-Dracula vampires were typically in homoerotic plots is intriguing. The scope of the book narrowed considerably toward the end, with a whole chapter devoted to post-Reagan vampire lit/film; this narrowing gave the book an unbalanced feel.
Her book's central claim -- the construction of the vampire changes in reaction to the social and political milieu of the times -- is convincingly argued.
October 22, 2018
While more than capable of delivering thought-provoking conclusions from the context of various vampire media, Auerbach's perpetual desire to sound like a PHD chemistry professor really hampers digestion of the text. (It is possible for ideas to be made clear and concise without going to college to learn about the textual analysis beforehand.)
November 15, 2025
Gibt Einblick in die Entwicklung der Vampirliteratur und man erfährt darin viele interessante Details zum Genre. Wie Auerbach zum Beispiel den Gerichtsprozess gegen Oscar Wilde als historischen Einschnitt und Hintergrund für die Entstehung der Figur des Dracula bei Bram Stoker einordnet, klingt schlüssig und ist lesenswert. Das Buch streift auch die Frage, wie Horror entsteht, unter welchen Umständen er sich zum Massenphänomen entwickelt und was dieses Genre überhaupt bedient.
Mit Blick auf die Vampirfigur heben alle Kapitel hervor: Das Konstante am Vampir ist seine Veränderung, wie er immer wieder neu aufersteht, unter anderen gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen. Auerbach bringt das dann auf die schillernde Formulierung »every age embraces the vampire it needs«. Insgesamt wirkte die erste Hälfte des Buches auf mich deutlich stärker als der zweite Teil. Das könnte aber einfach daran liegen, dass Auerbach sich mit der Literatur des Spätviktorianismus hervorragend auskennt, während bei mir das Gegenteil der Fall ist. Wie dem auch sei. Ich freue mich fledermausbeflügelt auf zukünftige Dracula-Relektüren und andere Vampirlektüren.
Mit Blick auf die Vampirfigur heben alle Kapitel hervor: Das Konstante am Vampir ist seine Veränderung, wie er immer wieder neu aufersteht, unter anderen gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen. Auerbach bringt das dann auf die schillernde Formulierung »every age embraces the vampire it needs«. Insgesamt wirkte die erste Hälfte des Buches auf mich deutlich stärker als der zweite Teil. Das könnte aber einfach daran liegen, dass Auerbach sich mit der Literatur des Spätviktorianismus hervorragend auskennt, während bei mir das Gegenteil der Fall ist. Wie dem auch sei. Ich freue mich fledermausbeflügelt auf zukünftige Dracula-Relektüren und andere Vampirlektüren.
February 24, 2018
A brilliant piece of work; compelling in its thesis, elegant in its expression, and as willing to invoke Hammer's *Lust for A Vampire* as Polidori's "The Vampyre", and Case's "Tracking the Vampire" as Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. Vampire narratives track a culture's engagement with both repressive power and the forbidden, and the vampires themselves morph to reflect this. Patriachal monoliths and lines of flight, hairy atavisms and marble angels, Auberback writes... "in part to reclaim them for a female tradition, one that has not always known its allies." Above all else, it depicts resistance as dynamic and ongoing.
Read
January 20, 2023I know this is theory about vampires but it’s still theory and i found it interesting but VERY dense
I do wish this had been written in a post-Buffy post-Twilight world because those are the vampires I’m most personally interested in
I do wish this had been written in a post-Buffy post-Twilight world because those are the vampires I’m most personally interested in
May 24, 2024
my religious text of choice
September 23, 2022
Dissertation research
August 11, 2017
Testo indubbiamente interessante per l'impronta che dà all'argomento "vampiro", un'impronta di valenza sociale, intima e politica insieme.
L'autrice parte dall'Ottocento e studia le caratteristiche dei primi vampiri, quelli di stampo byroniano, indagando il concetto di "legame" col mortale. Passa poi alla carnalizzazione del vampiro con "Christabel" di Coleridge e "Carmilla" di Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, e alla valenza sovversiva dei vampiri ottocenteschi. Dedica un lungo paragrafo a Dracula e ai "paletti" che quest'opera inserirà nelle produzioni di vampiri successivi. Si dilunga poi a parlare delle varie produzioni filmiche dedicate al vampiro, e di come questa figura si sia modificata nel tempo a seconda del contesto sociale e politico in cui si trovava a "vivere".
Copre un arco di tempo che va da inizio Ottocento fino al 1990 circa e, come ho detto, è una lettura interessante. Unica pecca: un po' troppo lento nella parte centrale. Per il resto ottimo volume!
L'autrice parte dall'Ottocento e studia le caratteristiche dei primi vampiri, quelli di stampo byroniano, indagando il concetto di "legame" col mortale. Passa poi alla carnalizzazione del vampiro con "Christabel" di Coleridge e "Carmilla" di Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, e alla valenza sovversiva dei vampiri ottocenteschi. Dedica un lungo paragrafo a Dracula e ai "paletti" che quest'opera inserirà nelle produzioni di vampiri successivi. Si dilunga poi a parlare delle varie produzioni filmiche dedicate al vampiro, e di come questa figura si sia modificata nel tempo a seconda del contesto sociale e politico in cui si trovava a "vivere".
Copre un arco di tempo che va da inizio Ottocento fino al 1990 circa e, come ho detto, è una lettura interessante. Unica pecca: un po' troppo lento nella parte centrale. Per il resto ottimo volume!
September 9, 2017
Testo indubbiamente interessante per l'impronta che dà all'argomento "vampiro", un'impronta di valenza sociale, intima e politica insieme.L'autrice parte dall'Ottocento e studia le caratteristiche dei primi vampiri, quelli di stampo byroniano, iano, indagando il concetto di "legame" col mortale. Passa poi alla carnalizzazione del vampiro con "Christabel" di Coleridge e "Carmilla" di Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, e alla valenza sovversiva dei vampiri ottocenteschi. Dedica un lungo paragrafo a Dracula e ai "paletti" che quest'opera inserirà nelle produzioni di vampiri successivi. Si dilunga poi a parlare delle varie produzioni filmiche dedicate al vampiro, e di come questa figura si sia modificata nel tempo a seconda del contesto sociale e politico in cui si trovava a "vivere".
Copre un arco di tempo che va da inizio Ottocento fino al 1990 circa e, come ho detto, è una lettura interessante. Unica pecca: un po' troppo lento nella parte centrale. Per il resto ottimo volume!
Copre un arco di tempo che va da inizio Ottocento fino al 1990 circa e, come ho detto, è una lettura interessante. Unica pecca: un po' troppo lento nella parte centrale. Per il resto ottimo volume!
July 2, 2024
If you think you know your vampire literature, this is the book for you! I thought I had a pretty good grip on vampire books and poems going all the way back to Carmilla, but it turns out I still have some reading to do. This book sent me back to google a few times to look up various authors. Well written, thoughtful, exhaustive, well-researched, a good addition to any vampire lover's library. I wondered at times whether the author, at times, seems to read more into some of the works than the author put in there, but she may well be more insightful than the authors were when they penned the novels, short stories, and poems. Good stuff
March 14, 2021
A thorough overview of vampires in literature and film, showing how they reflect the society which gives birth to them. In a work of this length, there are inevitably going to be omissions. Perhaps there might have been room for Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce, given that the same director's Salem's Lot is included? And maybe more female vampires could have made the cut, such as Countess Dracula and even Vampyros Lesbos? Even so, this is a fascinating and well-researched book that will appeal to any fan of the Count in his various manifestations.
December 20, 2024
A thoughtful piece of writing with an elegant argument: that the figure of the vampire in literature and film has proved remarkably fluid over the past two centuries to allow writers to utilise it to embody fears and ideas from different eras. This book is structured chronologically, beginning with John Polidori and working through to Kathryn Bigelow's NEAR DARK, and thus has much in common with the numerous other books on the same topic covering the same kind of background. However, the author's prose is compelling, her argument logical, and her breadth of knowledge impressive.
April 10, 2023
4.5/5
I liked this book and the history of how vampire sorties have evolved over time but the formatting of the book is weird and the choice of words is kinda weird other than that I enjoyed the book a lot
I liked this book and the history of how vampire sorties have evolved over time but the formatting of the book is weird and the choice of words is kinda weird other than that I enjoyed the book a lot
September 29, 2017
Brilliant insight into the Western vampire. I do wish the book weren't so defined by the era in which it was written.
October 7, 2019
Some interesting ideas and information in the first half but, in the last half, a bit too academic for my taste, considering the subject.
March 15, 2022
3.5.
Good overall, but imagine covering 1970s Dracula adaptations and not mentioning Blacula.
Good overall, but imagine covering 1970s Dracula adaptations and not mentioning Blacula.
April 15, 2022
Though now a few decades behind, Aurerbach makes an interesting survey of the first 200 years of vampire literature, with a focus on how they refected the societies that created them.
May 14, 2022
I actually really enjoyed this book! I thought it was pretty funny but also educational so a solid four :)
November 21, 2023
La mejor crítica literaria o de cine es, a mi gusto, la que te hace repensar obras que ya conoces y verlas de una nueva manera. Esto es justamente lo que más me gustó del libro. Su tesis principal es que cada época adopta a los vampiros que necesita, y que la interpretación de estos adorables no-muertos refleja el clima cultural de su tiempo.
Por ejemplo, yo antes asumía que para escribir "Drácula" (1897), Bram Stoker simplemente había construido sobre el trabajo anterior de Polidori y Le Fanu. Pero no; Aurbach me demostró cuánto hizo Stoker por transformar a los chupasangre, y el nuevo arquetipo que fijó fue tan exitoso que en retrospectiva los otros fueron vistos como antecedentes, aunque en realidad eran muy distintos. Al mismo tiempo, las adaptaciones posteriores de Drácula revivieron aspectos de vampiros previos que Stoker había borrado por completo.
Auerbach señala que tanto Lord Ruthven en "El Vampiro", como Carmilla en la novela epónima, son seductores que penetran el espacio íntimo de sus víctimas. Son fuerzas subversivas que amenazan el orden familiar tradicional con la clase de amistad íntima que ofrecen, que raya de forma más o menos explícita en el homoerotismo. Drácula, en cambio, no es un amigo ni un amante; es un tirano. Usa el mesmerismo y el control mental más que la seducción.
Mientras que los vampiros anteriores, típicamente románticos, tenían un gran potencial subversivo, como novela victoriana, "Drácula" es una obra ideológicamente conservadora, que sintetiza las fobias de la sociedad burguesa de su época: miedo al extranjero, al aristócrata decadente, al desviado sexual… En cambio, reivindica la autoridad patriarcal, la camaradería masculina (especialmente en el combate, en la expedición colonialista) y la superioridad de lo británico sobre lo europeo oriental.
Auerbach parece tener una especial predilección por los vampiros de los 70. Especialmente por parte de autoras mujeres, aunque también algunos hombres, los vampiros vuelven a tener su poder seductor, y además son reinterpretados como marginados sociales, aristócratas del alma que están por encima de una sociedad barbárica y violenta que los persigue, pero al mismo tiempo amantes sensibles que lamentan la estupidez humana.
Pero la década de los 80, con el giro hacia el conservadurismo encarnado por Ronald Reagan, volvería a convertir a los vampiros en una amenaza a los valores tradicionales. El renovado autoritarismo ultraconservador de los 80 se deja sentir en todas partes, incluso cuando el vampiro vuelve a ser reclamado como ícono progresista. Los vampiros así construyen su propia comunidad aislada del mundo humano, en vez de intentar transformarlo.
Para una reseña y síntesis más detallados, checa mi blog:
https://www.maikciveira.com/2023/11/n...
Por ejemplo, yo antes asumía que para escribir "Drácula" (1897), Bram Stoker simplemente había construido sobre el trabajo anterior de Polidori y Le Fanu. Pero no; Aurbach me demostró cuánto hizo Stoker por transformar a los chupasangre, y el nuevo arquetipo que fijó fue tan exitoso que en retrospectiva los otros fueron vistos como antecedentes, aunque en realidad eran muy distintos. Al mismo tiempo, las adaptaciones posteriores de Drácula revivieron aspectos de vampiros previos que Stoker había borrado por completo.
Auerbach señala que tanto Lord Ruthven en "El Vampiro", como Carmilla en la novela epónima, son seductores que penetran el espacio íntimo de sus víctimas. Son fuerzas subversivas que amenazan el orden familiar tradicional con la clase de amistad íntima que ofrecen, que raya de forma más o menos explícita en el homoerotismo. Drácula, en cambio, no es un amigo ni un amante; es un tirano. Usa el mesmerismo y el control mental más que la seducción.
Mientras que los vampiros anteriores, típicamente románticos, tenían un gran potencial subversivo, como novela victoriana, "Drácula" es una obra ideológicamente conservadora, que sintetiza las fobias de la sociedad burguesa de su época: miedo al extranjero, al aristócrata decadente, al desviado sexual… En cambio, reivindica la autoridad patriarcal, la camaradería masculina (especialmente en el combate, en la expedición colonialista) y la superioridad de lo británico sobre lo europeo oriental.
Auerbach parece tener una especial predilección por los vampiros de los 70. Especialmente por parte de autoras mujeres, aunque también algunos hombres, los vampiros vuelven a tener su poder seductor, y además son reinterpretados como marginados sociales, aristócratas del alma que están por encima de una sociedad barbárica y violenta que los persigue, pero al mismo tiempo amantes sensibles que lamentan la estupidez humana.
Pero la década de los 80, con el giro hacia el conservadurismo encarnado por Ronald Reagan, volvería a convertir a los vampiros en una amenaza a los valores tradicionales. El renovado autoritarismo ultraconservador de los 80 se deja sentir en todas partes, incluso cuando el vampiro vuelve a ser reclamado como ícono progresista. Los vampiros así construyen su propia comunidad aislada del mundo humano, en vez de intentar transformarlo.
Para una reseña y síntesis más detallados, checa mi blog:
https://www.maikciveira.com/2023/11/n...
May 28, 2024
a classic.
July 9, 2024
Skimmed through a bit of this but overall a really interesting read.
July 31, 2025
3.5 ⭐️
Idk I guess I wanted more from this? The beginning was very interesting as it presented better origins for vampires than I had knowledge of. Wonder what she would think of Twilight!
Idk I guess I wanted more from this? The beginning was very interesting as it presented better origins for vampires than I had knowledge of. Wonder what she would think of Twilight!
March 20, 2025
Read this one for a university course and I really liked it. It’s super insightful, well researched and interesting. If you want to learn about vampires and their function as a metaphor, I would definitely recommend this
August 28, 2024
I had slightly different expectations of what this book would be as compared to what it turned out to be, but I very much enjoyed it nonetheless. If you plan to read this book, be prepared for very contextual, nuanced discussions about vampires and the times in which they were created.
I'll admit, I enjoyed reading the introduction the most, and the early chapters about classical vampires of the nineteenth century - but the rest of the book had some sharp insight to sink my teeth into as well. Pun intended. It was a bit dry at some stages, with all the media referencing, but overall a great read. I'm glad I finally powered through and finished it.
I'll admit, I enjoyed reading the introduction the most, and the early chapters about classical vampires of the nineteenth century - but the rest of the book had some sharp insight to sink my teeth into as well. Pun intended. It was a bit dry at some stages, with all the media referencing, but overall a great read. I'm glad I finally powered through and finished it.
October 17, 2021
Every era has its own vampires—avatars of authority or anarchy, contagion or healing, family or solitude. From the Romantic and Victorian periods in England to times of Depression, Tumult, and rampant conservatism in the US, vampires transformed, sometimes horrors and other time saviors.
This is a tour de force, and I absolutely can't imagine such a book being published as a major academic book in 2021. It's just quirky, brilliant, irreverent, and often curmudgeonly Nina Auerbach reading vampire stories and creating her own meta-narrative uniting them into a kind of cultural history of the UK and the US from 1800 to 1990.
It was a joy to read, even if I sometimes got lost in Auerbach's U-turns and flash forwards. And even though I'm not familiar with many of the texts she analyzes.
I wish she were still with us so that she could write a sequel treating the vampire stories of my adulthood, from 1990 to 2021. I finally got around to reading Our Vampires, Ourselves because of the Netflix limited series Midnight Mass. I'd love to sit in Nina's office, choking on her cigarette smoke, and talk with her about that one.
This is a tour de force, and I absolutely can't imagine such a book being published as a major academic book in 2021. It's just quirky, brilliant, irreverent, and often curmudgeonly Nina Auerbach reading vampire stories and creating her own meta-narrative uniting them into a kind of cultural history of the UK and the US from 1800 to 1990.
It was a joy to read, even if I sometimes got lost in Auerbach's U-turns and flash forwards. And even though I'm not familiar with many of the texts she analyzes.
I wish she were still with us so that she could write a sequel treating the vampire stories of my adulthood, from 1990 to 2021. I finally got around to reading Our Vampires, Ourselves because of the Netflix limited series Midnight Mass. I'd love to sit in Nina's office, choking on her cigarette smoke, and talk with her about that one.
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